24 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community

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• Finally Proven: Twitter Does Affect Google Rankings
• Facebook Tagging – How it Works for Timelines and Pages
• What Bloggers Could Learn From Jim Abbott
• To Really Understand Social Media, You Must Also Understand Online Communities
• Demystifying the Hashtag and How to Leverage # on Twitter
• 10 Things Learned About Yourself After 100 Blog Posts
• How Do You Know if Your Social Strategy is Working?
• How to Find the Best SEO Service in the Google Panda & Penguin Era
• 5 Ways to Turn Twitter into Your Most Powerful Social Media Tool
• From Conversation Company to Optimization Organization
• Enterprise Collaboration Take Two: Social Task Management
• The Future of Social Media: Identifying the Drivers
• Google Puts the Author Into Authority as Penguin Eats Links
• Some More Google+ Hangout Tips
• Tread Lightly and Don’t Carry a Red Pen: Tips for Editing a Corporate Blog
• Understanding Google+ and Why You Should Not Ignore It
• Setting Up Your Google+ Account and Profile The Right Way
• Rinkuru: Japanese Interpretation of LinkedIn
• The Rise of Instagram in Social Marketing: Tapping Into Consumer Creativity
• Should You Hide Your Address at Google Places?
• 5 Reasons I Don’t Tweet During Conferences Anymore
• Google’s Emphasis on Authorship and Google+
• Get Social: Become an Authority in Your Industry
• Promotions on Facebook – How Not to Get Your Page Deleted and Lose Your Fans!

Finally Proven: Twitter Does Affect Google Rankings Posted: 05 May 2012 03:00 PM PDT Anyone who works in the fields of search or social media has known for years that the two are intrinsically linked. But the question of how activity on social channels affects search rankings has perplexed and frustrated many of us. This question led Branded3 to conduct a rigorous study over the last two months, researching the effect of Twitter activity on Google rankings. We were well-placed to carry out such a study, thanks to the success of our Twitter-based petition site, Twitition.com. Having amassed over 7.5million digital signatures, all of which were automatically tweeted out, the site provided us with an unprecedented data set that we used to study the rankings of websites that were linked to in tweets. The study We took a sample of over 8,500 petitions and established where they ranked for natural search terms relevant to their content. We then assessed the correlation between the rankings and the number of times each petition's URL had been retweeted. The findings The results were fascinating, providing us with the following key findings: • URLs receive a significant rankings boost from Google when they are tweeted and retweeted on Twitter. This boost levels out at around 50 tweets, and little further benefit is gained until social noise reaches around 5,000 tweets • High volume Twitter activity leads to a fantastic rankings boost, with URLs receiving over 7,500 tweets almost always ranking on the first page of Google. What does this mean for businesses? The study gives real weight to marketers looking to further their social media activity, given that there is a tangible, provable SEO benefit to be gained from having links to commercial web pages shared on social media. There is still work to be done in this area; Google and Twitter are said to be locking horns over the issue of how visible tweeted links should be to search engines, and for how long they remain visible. While the Branded3 study illustrates a very clear trend, it would be nigh on impossible to establish an absolute causal link between social noise and search rankings, given the plethora of other factors at play around the web. But the study marks an important first step in building a clear picture of the ever-growing value of social media to marketers and businesses the world over. You can download an illustrated version of the research here.

Facebook Tagging – How it Works for Timelines and Pages Posted: 05 May 2012 01:30 PM PDT Although Facebook Tagging seems rather straightforward, when I received the following as a comment in another post, I decided to write an entire post on the subject. Recently, we were tagged in a post by another company. There was nothing inflammatory about the post, but my company is very sensitive regarding what is posted on our wall. As of right now, the post does not show up on the Page's wall or in the news feed of people who like the Page. Would you let me know how tagging works for Facebook Pages, as it seems to be different from personal profiles? Also, is there a way to review tags and approve them before they are posted? Facebook Tagging Overview Facebook Tagging - How it works for Timelines & Pages Facebook tagging links a person, Page, or place to something you post, like a status update, photo or app activity. Tagging is a useful feature because it: Notifies a friend or Page when you post something that pertains to them, letting them know that they were mentioned; Makes the post more visible because it appears in the news feed and timeline of the friend or Page you tagged (if the person has set the post to be visible to friends or public). When a friend or Page is notified that they have been tagged, it increases engagement because they are more likely to comment on or like the activity in which they have been tagged. Without tagging, you could post a nice comment but your friend or the Page owners may never know they were mentioned. However, since your entire post including associated comments is automatically posted onto the wall of whichever friend/Page is tagged, there is an unspoken etiquette of Facebook Tagging that you need to understand. Facebook Tagging for Timelines When someone tags your personal profile (timeline), you have control about how you handle tags. You can turn on Tag Review in your privacy settings to ensure you always approve a tag. Timeline Tag Settings found in Privacy Settings If you don't want to restrict people, you do have many options if someone tags you unfavorably. Facebook Tagging for Pages Only Pages within the Brands & Products or People categories can be tagged in photos. In addition, the privacy of the photo is always respected when a Page is tagged in a photo. If a photo is published to "everyone", then it can appear publicly on the Photos tab of the Page and the admins can see it. Since Masterful Marketing's Page is in the Brand or Product category, I was able to tag my page in a photo and a comment. Facebook Page Photo Tagging   I took a screenshot as I hovered over the image and you can see that I tagged my laptop. I also received notification in the Admin Panel of these events.   Page Tagging Notification The photo was visible on the Page under the photos area, but not on the timeline. Photo Tagging for Pages (click to enlarge) The layout of the photos section of your Page Timeline has your albums on top and tagged photos below. Tagging in posts show up on your timeline. Below is a post where I tagged the MH Paint Works Page and note that the post is in the right column. Page Tagging in Posts (click to enlarge) Some of these settings are editable. Go to your Admin Panel, click on the down arrow next to manage and select "Edit Page". Then select "Manage Permissions". Page Tagging - Managing Permissions As a Page Admin, you can set the permissions for your Page for how you want to handle posting. To make your Page more interesting, you should allow people to post content, photos and videos to your Page. The Post Visibility section enables you to put posts by others at the top of the right column on the timeline. That is what you see in the image above for MH Paint Works – my post in the right column. Plus you can restrict people from tagging photos that you post. Pages Tagging other Pages Tagging a Page from another Page is a nice way to promote other brands in which you may have a relationship, but to do so, you need to be using Facebook as your Page. To change to your Page, click on the down arrow next to home and select your Page: Using Facebook as a Page Once you have done that, you can tag another Page in a post. Facebook Page Tagging another Page I have not found any type of Tag Review for Pages as there is for Timelines. Admins need to be aware of what is going on with tagging and monitor the activity to avoid any issues. Have I missed any features of tagging for Timelines and Pages? Have you taken advantage of tagging to increase visibility for your Facebook Page?

What Bloggers Could Learn From Jim Abbott Posted: 05 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT Have you ever heard of Jim Abbott? He was a pitcher during the years of my youth, first for the California Angels (that team that has nothing to do with LA, Oakland, San Diego, or San Francisco), and he pitched for a few other teams including the Yankees. This may not seem all that extraordinary until you learn that Abbott was born with only one fully developed hand. He learned how to perch his glove on his undeveloped hand while pitching and throwing so that he could field and throw players out in one fluid motion. Beyond all of that, Abbott also pitched a no-hitter, obstacles and all. I saw a story on Abbott on Sunday Morning a few weeks ago, and the story focused on how Abbott is using his career to show kids with similar obstacles in their way that they can do whatever they want. The interviewer asked him if his hand had been on his mind when he pitched his no-hitter. Abbott said no. He was just a pitcher trying to accomplish what all pitchers want to accomplish. Of course, in the process of just trying to pitch his best, Abbott, through his actions, remains a shining example for kids who may feel hopeless or discouraged. What does this have to do with blogging? You might well be asking yourself what this all has to do with blogging. "Has Margie finally lost her mind? She's just raving and ranting about Jim Abbott now." Well, fear not, my furry feathery friends. I have a point. In a parallel universe, Jim Abbott could have sat on the sidelines. He could have pointed out how sports were made only to accommodate "normal" people. He could have become bitter and angry and could have torn down pitchers who were born into an easy life. Of course, this would have made him a rather normal human being, but he'd have probably not become a known entity. He certainly would not have become part of the select group of people who, as professional pitchers, pitched a no-hitter. I've noticed lately that a lot of bloggers seem to be taking this rather negative approach, however. There is an immense amount of focus on people who are offering bad advice, people who are doing this that or the other thing in a dumb way, bad this, bad that. And that's fine. It's part of the human condition to critique others, especially in a tight, competitive space like the online world. But what does this accomplish? It creates strife. It creates conflict. More than anything, it paints a negative portrait of just one person – the blogger. My humble recommendation is that we in the online world take the Jim Abbott approach. Instead of pointing the finger at everything that is piled against us or everything that is wrong in the online world, perhaps we could focus more on the right way to do things. Perhaps through our actions we could guide people to where we feel they could or should go and emphasize that more than on the people who we feel are doing it wrong. Perhaps just by doing what we feel is best, we could serve as an example to the people who follow us about in this space. Focusing less on the external The other lesson that bloggers could learn from Jim Abbott is that we don't need to worry as much about what others think about us and what we're doing. This is something I'm certainly guilty of. Bloggers may wonder if people will like their voice. Will people think my advice is good or bad? Will I ever be one of the "cool kids" online? Jim Abbott could have worried about what people would think as he played first football and then baseball. He could have worried that people would make fun of his style, make fun of his hand, or stand in his way. But Abbott didn't get hung up about any of that. He just did his own unique thing, unparalleled as it was in the world of professional sports. And he excelled. Surely there's a lesson there. We all need to worry less about how we are perceived in this space. I fear we are all shrinking our potential impact by becoming too self-involved. What attracts me to social media is the capacity to share with others. If I want to talk to myself I can do that whenever I want (and maybe I do). Out here, it's the amazing ability to share ideas and learn things. I really believe that, even still. So what can we bloggers learn from Jim Abbott? Be your own self. Do your own thing. Instead of sitting and complaining about how much things suck and what d-bag x is doing now, shine your own light out there and make things better through your own actions. It's an interesting concept, right? Who wants to try it? Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/baseball-backs/4970287139/ via Creative Commons

To Really Understand Social Media, You Must Also Understand Online Communities Posted: 05 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT It is very easy to get excited by social media. To think about the tools you can use. To feel you must rush to be on the latest platform or site. But in all this excitement it can be easy to forget something that is more important than the tools, platforms and sites that you can make use of – the skills and expertise you need to identify, manage and grow a true online community. When we talk about social media we are really only talking about tools that we can use to help us and the people we engage to achieve a task. To make a success in social media we need to understand online communities. For those of us who have been working in this space for many years this has long been the basis of all our work. What is an online community? There is a temptation to assume that all use of social media is the same – that we are 'doing social media'. But this is just not true. There is a fundamental difference in how people behave when they are primarily in a group of actual friends (such as on Facebook) and how you interact with people not because you know them and are friends with them, but because you share a common interest (such as in a forum for fans of Arsenal football club, a site for mum chatting about nutrition in early years or a group of runners helping each other with training advice and tips as they prepare to run a marathon). An online community is a group of people who exhibit this second behaviour. They do not necessarily know each other, and may not have any desire to become friends in that broader sense of the word. They do have a common passion, interest, concern or question. And they can find and engage with others online because of this. Working with online communities For most organisations looking at social media, it is only by identifying, building and engaging with online communities that they will start to get real benefit. Online communities are truly scalable because they do not rely on becoming 'friends' with people but mean that you (the organisation) and the rest of the community engage on topics that you all share in common. This is real engagement in a way that just amassing Likes or Follows is not. Social media just provides the set of tools you can use to do this. But the real skill is threefold: Firstly to be able to identify the community you want to engage and understand why they would engage with you. What is the passion, problem, concern, issue or question that you can connect with your community about? And why would they connect with you at all about it? Then how do you find these people and help them to find you? Likes on Facebook or Followers on Twitter do not necessarily make an online community. Finally how do you manage them. There is a valuable and often heated debate elsewhere about the differences between a social media manager and a community manager, but any community does need the 'party host' role. A community manager who facilitates conversations and activities, helps to moderate the community so that it is a productive and friendly place for all, and who acts as the link between the organisation and the online community. With all the excitement of social media it often feels like we have forgotten what we have known for many years about online communities and the way they work and interact. For anybody looking at or working in social media a solid grounding in how online communities work and how we should work with them is essential.

Demystifying the Hashtag and How to Leverage # on Twitter Posted: 05 May 2012 10:30 AM PDT When training in social media at both the introduction level and intermediate level – when I get to the section on Twitter, it's clear that people are confused, and often fearful, of the relatively harmless, 'Hashtag'. I'm often met with questions such as; 'but where do I get a Hashtag from?', or, 'who creates the Hashtag for me?' or, 'what if I use a hashtag that's already been created?'. So, just as in my recent post where I clearly spelled out how to set up and leverage Hootsuite to manage multiple social media accounts – in this post, I am setting out to demystify what a hashtag is and how anyone can be using and leveraging hashtags on Twitter, effectively – covering: What a Hashtag is How you go about creating them Tips for leveraging them How to explore Hashtags already out there Firstly, what is a Hashtag? On a keyboard, or phone keypad – we're all used to seeing a hash sign, #. On Twitter, the term Hashtag is simply where a # sign has been placed in front of a word or group of words, (eg: #hignfy, #hislop, #glee, #londonriots, #havingabadday) to collectively 'tag' or 'group' tweets that all mention a particular Hashtag. For example: The popular BBC1 satire news show, 'Have I Got News for You', promotes a Hashtag #hignfy. Whilst the show is airing, people watching the show can collectively share opinion. As the example shows below – I have simply gone to my search box on Twitter and typed in #hignfy. You can see I've snipped just a small sample of the conversation that is happening around a program that aired the night before. Of course, had I done the search as the program was airing, I could have joined the buzz of a more 'live' conversation. The people talking and sharing about #hignfy do not have to be following each other on Twitter – but instead, they can all be discussing the program, asking questions, sharing opinion etc – simply by mentioning the #hignfy in their tweets. Therefore, if I wanted to find any 'Have I Got News for You' program fans – I could search on the #hignfy to see who is talking about it. It's highly unlikely that any of them would mention that they are program fans in their Twitter profiles. Therefore, without hashtags, how else would I ever have known they were fans or be able to connect and reach an audience that I'm interested in connecting with? What do we take away from this? Effectively, a hashtag (#) is a way of searching for tweets that have a common topic. They are effectively, an 'anchor' to group conversations that allow you to create communities of people all interested in the same topic. The hashtag makes it easier for them to find and share information related to a particular topic. For example; when the London riots kicked off in August last year – anyone wanting to know or share anything about what was happening could follow news by searching #londonriots and if sharing news, they could include #londonriots in the tweet. The hashtag was used by thousands of people – for different purposes; the police and emergency services were using the hashtag to report updates, as were local councils and local authorities. People were searching the hashtag to keep up-to-date with where there were problems and whether it was safe to get home. Remember, these people were in no other way connected, the common factor was the fact that they all wanted to know about or report on the London riots. Therefore, the #londonriots became a topic that a diverse set of people were talking about. Similarly, when I deliver social media training, myself and other trainers training with Business Training Made Simple, all share articles, tips, advice and offers via #smetraining2012 whilst we are training. At the outset of any course, we advise delegates of the # – and at the end of the course, we go to Twitter search (or Hootsuite) to show them the stream of information we have created during the course, and also show them tweets that already exists on the hashtag, so they can clearly see all the resources and conversations happening around the hashtag. So, it becomes a useful tool to share information and resources to a diverse audience. Hashtags often Trend on Twitter When you get enough people talking about or mentioning the same # – then it can 'trend'. (You see 'trending topics' – on your Twitter home page on the left hand side). All that effectively means is that a huge 'buzz' is occurring about a topic or hashtag – so much so, that it becomes a topic that is 'being talked about the most' – on Twitter. Given that there are approx 250 million tweets a day, then trending is no simple task. As you can see from below – right now, London trends include three #. #IJustLoveItWhen #listofturnons and #yeahIwantthat . Effectively, a huge amount of people are including those hashtags into their tweets – so much so, that they are trending. (Note: I never said all # were purposeful – and it just goes to show that a hashtag can be created about anything, and that many are pretty mundane). Hashtags, Search and Awareness As shown earlier, I can go to Twitter search and simply put in my # term to find out what's happening around a topic – or to see if a # exists. Using the #hignfy example again, you'll see below that when I enter the terms 'have I got news for you' into the search box, there are people talking about the program, but they are not using the # to connect with others. It's the same program, they're talking about some of the same issues, but – they are not using the #hignfy (in fact some are using #haveIgotnewsforyou and #bbchignfy). Therefore, these conversations did not appear when I did my #hignfy search. (Incidentally, #hignfy is the hashtag officially promoted at the beginning of the program by the BBC). I suppose that cements the point that if you want people to use a hashtag, (so you can create an audience around a topic) you need to promote it effectively. It's interesting to see that a number of recent Nike advertisements have featured, not a URL but instead a #. Their huge billboard and cinema ads featured not a www.nike.com url – but instead the hashtag #makeitcount. If you do a search on Twitter on the #makeitcount, you'll see the conversations. Get Wise with Hashtags It's a pretty fertile advertising tactic, but it's a highly interesting one – and one that seems to be becoming more popular. After all, it gives brands and advertisers a mechanism to anchoring a community of diverse people around an online conversation by widely promoting the #. And if your audience is on Twitter, then it's a great way to get people participating with your advertising campaign. Of course, conversely, McDonalds recently promoted the #McDStories. The objective was to encourage people to share stories (which clearly they were hoping would be positive) around their experience of McDonalds. Social Media platforms enable everyone and anyone to publish and share their views and opinions – and therefore, with this campaign, McDonalds received not just positive stories but also highly negative stories alongside their #McDStories. They of course, were promoting the #McDStories – so they themselves were alerting audiences to view these negative stories. The lesson – be sure you're using the # smartly. After all – you are creating an anchor for lots of people to share and talk – therefore, ideally, you don't want to create a 'bashtag', where everyone is sharing their gripes about you. . Where you do get Hashtags? Anyone can create a hashtag. There isn't a repository where you go and 'get one'. You can simply create one yourself by adding the simple # before typing a keyword or group of words. However, it's a good idea to 'check' a hashtag out before you start promoting it. You want to check the hashtag you are about to use, is either unique, or isn't associated to something totally irrelevant already. For example, let's say you are running an event for Vets – you've got 300 people coming, and so there's no way you're going to be able to have a conversation with each of those delegates. Whilst you can take a few questions from the floor – again, that's not engaging with every delegate that may have a question. By promoting a hashtag for your event, and showcasing this at the outset in promotional materials – you can get people connecting and talking; before, during and after the event. Let's say I create a brand or hashtag for the event #vetsandpets . I could go to Twitter, insert that hashtag into search and see if it was being used elsewhere. You can see that there are no tweets for that # – so I'm safe to use it. NB: Be mindful that Twitter tweets are limited to 140 characters – so you don't want to use a ridiculously long # eg: #vetsandpetsannualevent2012 – rather use #vets&pets Tapping into Relevant Audiences via Hashtags To promote my event to a wider targeted audience, I may want to check out other hashtags to see if I can tap into other audiences using #hashtags that are appropriate and relevant to my event. For example, I initially, typed in #vets – but that was pulling up a lot of tweets about 'veterans' – whereas, when I typed in #veterinary – you can see that there are a number of related hashtags that I can explore and perhaps use in my tweets alongside my #vetsandpets event hashtag to grow awareness into a targeted audience. However, word of warning here – you do not and I repeat do not, want to be hijacking trending or popular hashtags which are totally unrelated for promotional intent. The term 'mashtagging' is defined in the Urban Dictionary as the following: Mashtag n. A social networking status update, Tweet, or post that contains an unnecessarily large number of tags or tagged names often unrelated to the context of the post. There have been a few incidents where brands have piggy-backed on trending topics, often highly sensitive such as #Cairo and #Egypt – around the time of the uprising in a totally unrelated way and they've come off really badly. You can see from below – a while back (late 2009) HabitatUK's tweets included well known brand hashtags or trending hashtags to promote their products into wider audiences. Since when did HabitatUK sell #Apple products? The onslaught that followed their hijacking attempts was not pretty – and highly damaging to the brand at large, getting them a reputation on this far reaching channel as Twitter spammers. And as if that wasn't enough, Twitter can close your account if they think you're out to spam by using hashtags incorrectly. So beware. If enough people complain or report you to Twitter, then it could be goodbye Twitter account. What do we take away from this? Check out whether the hashtag you are looking to promote is already in use. A simple search on Twitter should do it. Look for relevant hashtags around your hashtag and review who is talking around the topic – they may be relevant for you to talk to too. Don't spam by jumping onto trending or popular hashtags that are totally irrelevant to your promotion or conversation. It's spam, it's frowned upon and upon reflection of those that have done it already, it's caused a considerable amount of negativity towards a brands reputation. If you want other relevant audiences to find your conversations – then use a keyword enabled hashtag which they may search on. If it's for a bespoke event or campaign, then be sure to promote the hashtag so that users know about its existence. Finally, I'm often asked whether there is a directory of hashtags. I have had a look at things such as Hashtagify, Twubs, Hashtag.org – but as yet, I haven't come across a simple real-time directory where I can view all the hashtags ever created. Perhaps it's out there already – and if so, do share – or perhaps Twitter is working on a program which separates out and stores all #hashtag references alphabetically – to create a huge repository to review. That said, given how random hashtags are – I'm not sure how useful a directory would be. For now, my advice is to do some simple real-time research using Twitter search before you create a hashtag. I hope this post has helped to explain what a hashtag is, how to use them and how not to use them – however, any questions or comments – would love to hear from you.

10 Things Learned About Yourself After 100 Blog Posts Posted: 05 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT I had to take a moment to pause and reflect on the first 100 posts of my personal blog. When I think about what I've learned, and how those will influence my next 100 posts, 10 things come to mind that may also be helpful for you as you chart the course that lies ahead for your blog, whether you're just starting out or are planning the next phase. 10 things you learn 1. Objective is boring. I've learned that there's little point in being objective because I figure if people want that, they'll tune into their nightly news. I like giving credit to people who I think have done a good job, and calling out people who whiff at brand development. At least I know it's important to keep it real, no matter what. When I think about blogs that I find interesting, they inject opinion. And if they're not taking a side, they're asking questions that provoke thought and continued discussion. I'm striving in the next 100 posts to do more of that. 2. One post can explode the traffic. Seriously. I awoke some days to find that one post has just a little traction, and it was through the roof on other days. These are the posts that keep generate readership months and months after they've been posted, much to my amazement. The takeaway is to look for the commonalities between the posts that are really taking off. Is it because they have a certain format or subject matter or tone? 3. You do not have to post every day. Not even close. There's always so much made about frequency. Yes, you have to post consistently, but post when the spirit moves you to write something meaningful, not because someone said you have to post every day. At this point, I've tried to say something useful at least twice a week that will benefit readers. That's the consistency part. Beyond that, when the moment grabs me, I write a post usually in one sitting and never look back. When I'm not feeling it, I don't force the issue. 4. Don't try to be Hemingway with every post. I know, I just said to write something meaningful. And I did mean that. But I sometimes found myself over-analyzing my content quality when I also had to remember to get it out there to express myself on a time-sensitive topic. Again, I think having a loose weekly deadline for yourself can give you the balance of a time boundary without rushing your content out there too prematurely ("I have to comment on that news today!"). Relax. Absorb it. Craft your take thoughtfully. Then stick to your focus of making sure you comment on it within a reasonable time-frame. If something important happens on a Monday, I try to comment on it within the week but not three weeks later when it's old news. 5. You touch people you never thought you would. It's been very cool to see business relationships and opportunities transpire in the last year as a result of this endeavor. Students, CEOs, blog communities, folks inviting me to sneak preview events and conferences and so on. Think you can get these kind of things from spending a bunch on direct mail? Yeah, right. Blogging works. But if you think you can get amazing results after your first 2-3 posts, don't bother. Patience isn't just a virtue. It's mandatory. 6. Subscribers take time to accumulate. Chris Brogan said it took him 8 years to get 100 subscribers. Knowing who he is and my admiration for him, that fact has really stuck with me and encouraged me. I guess in that context, getting about a 1/3 of that in year one ain't too shabby. There's definitely a lot of people visiting and reading, so I can't complain about them not taking the subscription step too much. I'm sure there are tweaks I'll explore (without being too gimmicky about it) but when you focus on the content that your potential subscribers want to hear about regularly, that's far and away the most important thing. 7. E-mail still offers plenty of share-ability. After Facebook and Twitter, I found a lot of sharing of articles going on via e-mail. So even though e-mail may feel like a communications dinosaur, the fact is it's not going away for a very long time. Especially among people over 30 years old. 8. Don't sleep on StumbleUpon. Nobody talks about this channel as much as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or Google Plus. But I'm telling you, on certain days when you get lucky by your post being voted up, it's a traffic bonanza. 9. Could that long post have been divided into a Part 1 and Part 2? Probably. I'm wordy. Sometimes more than I'd like to be. And I think if I'd divided some posts in half, I might be at 150 posts or more by now. Not a horrible thing, but considering how much Google likes more and more pages within a site, this might be helpful to consider going forward. Plus I think people have a general threshold of wordage. 10. Offering guest posts is great for variety. What "cousin" industries make for good guest post opportunities? I'm in Social Media Marketing, but guest posts from people in other industries have given readers the perspective of people in HR, Operations, Agency New Business and more. It also hopefully helped drive some good traffic to their sites because some still get great readership, which feels good. Plus it helps alleviate the pressure of a post that day, so that certainly doesn't hurt. Do remember to guide your guest posters so they're writing within your blog's theme and audience rather than anything they feel like. I wonder if you've felt the same way on some of these points or would add some about your own blogging experiences? If so, let me know about those in the comment section below. Author: Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based consultant focused on brand strategy and content marketing. Dan has guided a variety of CEOs and Marketing Directors at small to medium-sized companies, providing hundreds of strategic plans to help businesses identify their best niches and areas of opportunity. Dan blogs on Chicago Brander, mentors advertising students and cheers relentlessly for the Chicago Bears. Dan graduated from Drake University with a degree in Advertising.

How Do You Know if Your Social Strategy is Working? Posted: 05 May 2012 07:50 AM PDT Devising and implementing a social strategy is no small feat. You'd be surprised to know just how many companies out there are struggling with this. However, just because you think your strategy is working, doesn't necessarily mean that it is. So how do you know if your social strategy is working, well Bill Kalma, VP of technical services at Model Metrics, offers up four characteristics of a successful social enterprise that you should look for. 1. Connectivity Internal & External According to Kalma's post "Connectivity within an organization, between employees, departments, regions and divisions, is key." A natural offspring of increased internal and external connectivity is greater communication flow, which has a multitude of benefits. Kalma highlights several: increased connectivity aids in tactical communications related to business processes, on-boarding new employees, and building a culture of teamwork. It's important to keep in mind, when thinking of connectivity, that it's not just internal connectivity that's important. You have to remember when becoming a true social enterprise you must have an external presence as well. According to Kalma, "participat[ing] in external, public social networks is also a requirement of the social enterprise. It's no longer a nice thing for companies to be on networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn it's now a requirement." Everyone knows that recommendations, which are a major purchase influencer among consumers, often disseminate through the social web. Kalma warms though "not to dismiss these channels as only consumer centric…YouTube marketing strategies for B2B customers often include customer testimonials, product demos, fun topics related to an industry and viral video contests." 2. Personal One of the most powerful, yet challenging aspects of social networks is that everyone now has a voice. Public social networks are chalk full of customer questions, comments, issues, and opinions about the products they use. The key is being able to listen in on what's being said about your brand. "By listening to their customers, they [organizations] can identify issues to resolve and turn potentially dissatisfied customers into advocates. Best of all, this can be done in real-time." Kalma warns that just monitoring social networks isn't enough. What really sets apart the winners and losers is being able to take customer feedback and incorporate this knowledge into the organization. This is not an easy feat and usually results in developing a strategy in and of itself. "For example, Gatorade established Mission Control to monitor social networks. As a result, Gatorade has been able to track media performance; monitor sports landscape; track sports trends and buzz; track brand attributes; monitor online discussion; and perform proactive social media outreach." 3. Contextual Because of the personalized nature of the social enterprise, it requires consumers, partners and employees to interact on subjects that are meaningful within the context of what they are doing. Kalma writes, "Customers looking for information to make an educated purchase or solve a problem need timely and relevant data. If they can't find it, they may move on to your competitor. Smart businesses build customer social networks." By establishing these customer social networks, organizations can provide customers contextual information, answer questions and offer up suggestions in an open forum. For these networks to be effective, "communities need to be updated and managed, but the effort required to govern them is far outweighed by their impact." If done correctly, customers will feel valued and important when their voices are heard, when they experience assistance, or when they have an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge by helping someone in the community. When the previously mentioned interactions take place, they end up resonating deeply with customers and help facilitate customer loyalty. 4. Mobile You can't talk about the social enterprise without talking a little bit about mobile. With at least 425 million mobile Facebook users, it's becoming more and more apparent that social interactions cannot be limited to the desktop. "Social enterprises are embracing mobility and are establishing a strategy for mobile device, but they are also revolutionizing the war we work with them." Conceptually, the characteristics of a successful social enterprise are pretty simple, however they can end up being enormously complex in practice. Organizations need to have patience and a well thought out strategy to combat the complexities that will inevitably arise. As Kalma says, "A company will not see the value of becoming a truly social enterprise by adopting only a single strategy, but rather, by creating a balanced approach, suited to its needs."

How to Find the Best SEO Service in the Google Panda & Penguin Era Posted: 05 May 2012 07:30 AM PDT Finding the top SEO company to drive quality traffic to your business blog or website, without getting penalized by Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, is vital to the health of your organic search traffic. A previous article of mine entitled “Google’s Panda and Penguin updates are great for bloggers, marketers and business“, evoked several tales of horror regarding how paid SEO services had ruined legitimate business websites by using webspam and SEO over-optimization techniques. I hope to help other businesses avoid further heartache and consternation by providing some guidelines as to what to expect from a high quality SEO service provider. It’s probably not going to be what you expect… How to choose a post Panda/Penguin SEO service Are SEO, Internet marketing or social media your business’ area of expertise? If not, don’t assume anything. Focus instead on working out what you want to achieve. Let the SEO consultant or company impress you with how they intend to accomplish things – that’s their job. Your role as the client Most companies (SEO or otherwise) are going to grab any business they can. If you go to an SEO company and ask for SEO services, that is what you’ll get. But it is probably not what you need. Define your business objectives Instead of telling someone you need SEO, look at what you want. Write down your business objectives. It could be to increase traffic to your website; have more people sign up for your newsletter; appear higher up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages); and so on. With your business objectives in hand, you are now in a position too.. Discuss your business objectives with an ethical SEO expert Discussing business objectives is very different from requesting SEO, which is such a general term it is practically meaningless in the absence of business objectives to give it context. A good consultant, will recognize that your business objectives may not need more than a light sprinkling of SEO. It may be that you would benefit far more from a good social marketing campaign. It may be that your site already adheres closely to the “SEO best practices” laid out by Google, and what you need is to create more content to drive traffic and engage customers. The list goes on and on. Ultimately, I can pretty much guarantee that any SEO company you speak to who promises that SEO alone is a “magic pill” for your business, will do more damage than good. Here’s a tip: Look at the homepage of the SEO company or consultant you are thinking of hiring. Run some diagnostics to see if they are practicing what they preach. For comparison: my homepage has a Google PageRank of 5 or 6. It has a near perfect YSlow rating of around 96. It has a ‘Fully Loaded’ speed rating of 94. My Google search traffic has doubled nearly every quarter for the last year and a half. Characteristics of a great SEO You need an SEO consultant or company that can demonstrate the following: A deep appreciation of your business and business model A good understanding of your target market A creative mind that can work out a killer strategy to engage that audience Technical competence in implementing that strategy across multiple disciplines – SEO, social, marketing, etc Analytical ability to refine and improve performance An unwillingness to engage in webspam techniques – like generating inorganic back-links Guess what. Creativity, SEO experience, business savvy and technical skills don’t come cheap. Avoid being seduced by “instant success” offers. The Internet is the same as the real world. There are no free rides, and you get what you pay for. How to work with a post Panda/Penguin SEO Once you have found a consultant or company that demonstrates their understanding of your business requirements, and has told you how they plan to achieve your business goals (Note that they tell you how its done – not the other way round), you can begin working together. Are your expectations of SEO realistic? It’s important to understand that even with the best SEO in the world, building a successful online presence takes time and effort. Yes, the rewards can be substantial, but they may not happen overnight. There is no such thing, in the post Panda and Penguin world, as first page results (for highly relevant keywords) guaranteed. Don’t expect that. But, there is something far more valuable. It is possible to build a loyal and engaged online following that helps to evangelize your content and give it some real social and SEO clout. You may not appear in first place for one keyword, but you’ll be on the first page for lots of relevant keywords – with time. Evidence of an SEO at work Your SEO should also be obsessed with analytical data, and continually evaluating the viability of their SEO initiatives. They should be adaptable, flexible, and ready to evolve. That’s one of the reasons finding a good SEO can be so hard. Genuine SEO requires creative, analytical and technical skills all in one. ROI (Return on Investment) At the end of the day, judging how successful your SEO campaign and strategy have been, and how well your SEO has executed their tasks, comes down to the ROI – what value comes out compared to what went in. The return on investment calculation needs to look at the medium term. Your capital outlay may be high initially, but if done correctly the benefits are both cumulative and long lasting.

5 Ways to Turn Twitter into Your Most Powerful Social Media Tool Posted: 05 May 2012 07:30 AM PDT What do you use as your daily Social Media dashboard every day? Most likely not Twitter.com I am guessing. Yet, in recent months, there were a great number of browser extensions released, specifically for Twitter.com. They help you create a much greater experience right inside Twitter.com. What I like best about this is that you are in charge regarding how many bells and whistles you are adding. You can basically fully customize your own Social Media dashboard. So here are my top 5 finds you can use to make Twitter.com a truly powerful Social Media tool for you: Tool #1. Klout for Chrome Function: Find top users more easily There has been a lot of discussion around Klout in the last few months. One aspect, where it helps me greatly to make my daily Social Media life more efficient, is deciding how to best interact. When I only have a few minutes at hand every morning, being able to glance through my Twitter stream with everyone's Klout score next to their Tweets is a great filter. It helps me make better decisions and at the same time deepen my most important connections: Tool #2. Buffer Functions: Optimal timing, multiple accounts posting and old school retweets Another extension I am using every day is Buffer's Chrome extension. It puts a brand new Buffer button right into Twitter.com next to your Tweet button. If you click it, you can conveniently add any new Tweet to your Buffer to be posted later on at a better time: The extension also allows you to Buffer your retweets, either posting them now in old school retweet style or later on, when more of your followers will be online. There is plenty of more places you can now Buffer from on Twitter.com. Personally, I love going through my Twitter lists of top Social Media experts, Buffering everything that's handy, without flooding my followers. Tool #3. Pocket Function: Save your best article finds to be read later How often does it happen to you, that you come across a terrific article, but can't read it right now because you are just too busy? From now on, instead of letting it go into Twitter's limbo, just save it to be read later on with Pocket's browser extension: This way, you can save any article you are finding on Twitter to a reading list available any time later on for you. Personally, I found this to be a terrific way to just spend a few minutes browsing, and "pocketing" everything worth exploring later on: Tool #4. Tweet Filter Function: Unclutter your Twitter stream from the noise One problem I have on Twitter is that it often takes lots of Tweets to glance through, until I spot one that is worth reading. And a lot of the time, it's not even the people, it's just that I am looking for certain things throughout the day. With Tweet Filter, you can easily customize this for your own Twitter stream, getting rid of those Tweets that don't add any value for you at that moment. Filter out words like "4sq, twitpic or award". Whatever happens to add little value to you: Tool #5. Embedly Function: Get full media previews right inside Twitter.com The last goodie I have for you to really make Twitter.com as powerful as it gets is a neat extension called Embedly. It allows you to expand any Tweet to show you the full article or video view right inside Twitter.com: I find this to be a huge time saver. You don't have to click through and see if the headline is really what you expected, but you can just read the first few paragraphs right where you discover that content: 5 Quick Workflow Tips To Optimize Your Day On Twitter Adding those 5 lightweight solutions to your Chrome browser have saved me hours of time every day. In case this helps you at all with your personal workflow, here is how I approach every morning on Twitter with just 20 minutes per day: Glance through Tweets spotting the best ones using the Klout extension. Previewing the articles I like best with Embedly right on Twitter.com Saving those I want to go into more detail with Pocket to read later on Adding the best Tweets straight to my Buffer as old school retweets. Filter out any words that annoy me with Tweet Filter (this is something I don't do daily though) How about You? I am really curious, have you discovered Twitter.com as your personal Social Media dashboard already? Let me know if you know of any other ways to enhance your Twitter.com experience Image by rgddesigns

From Conversation Company to Optimization Organization Posted: 05 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT A friend and fellow country-man, Steven Van Belleghem from InSites Consulting, wrote two books, 'The Conversation Manager' and, more recently 'The Conversation Company'. Steven makes very valid points of how important it is to involve people and facilitate conversations while having a 'social' mindset across the organization. However, it's time to take it a step further and move to the optimization organization. This is my second post in the series of 'The Future of Social Media'. Again, feel free to comment. In social media, the emphasis has been on the holy conversation for quite some time now. Remember when you first signed up on Twitter? Indeed: "Join the conversation." While the term conversation has become one of those typical social media buzzwords, it is not new. We just used to call it dialogs in dialog marketing or interactions. However, with social media, businesses have finally been forced to start doing what they didn't do enough: having genuine two-way dialogs. The punishment if they don't? Losing revenues and trust, while dealing with a tarnished reputation. From conversations to touchpoints: death to the silos Unfortunately, with the idolatry of the 'conversation' as that 'social ideal', many businesses have been focusing too much on the different elements that constitute a conversation such as the 'content' that 'drives' or feeds it. They often also overemphasize the act of moving the conversations with and about our brands further and further into the social space, driven by an obsession with storytelling and worth of mouth. "Sharing" sometimes seems to be a new word for "sending" or "pushing". Conversations, storytelling (which does not equal telling stories, by the way…) and word of mouth are all very important. However, we must not drive and facilitate conversations for the sake of them. The focus must shift from the stories we tell and the content we spread, towards the individual interactions with the individual consumer. Their preferences matter. They steer the content and the conversation. The customer experience and each element that constitutes it, is your holy grail. Take the entire social customer experience into account, optimize the value of the touchpoints that constitute it, and put needs, emotional preferences and the buying journey into the heart of the content and conversation process. It's not a coincidence social media experts are increasingly talking about conversion and integration. As Brian Solis rightfully said in a recent interview, marketers and executives have been very fast in their efforts to put social in silos. In fact, they always tend to do that in order to have a grasp of a consumer, media and buying reality that is too complex for simplistic models and categorizations. However, silos are the death of everything that we can call social: they stand in the way of internal collaboration, and of a coordinated and consistent effort to serve the customer and have meaningful dialogs with consumers. A customer-centric and preference-driven approach goes beyond silos, channels and certainly social media. Do not ask how you can drive conversations. Ask how you can organize your marketing and business to capture what is being said and what the consumer wants, regardless of channel, time and context. The individual preference, signal and act is at the center of your content and all conversations. Businesses that use social media for marketing and business purposes – finally – start realizing consumers are people and by definition social and channel-agnostic. It's time to put people back in the overall marketing process and break down those silos. It's time to integrate 'social' in the broadest sense with everything else we do. It's a key evolution that will shape many evolutions regarding processes and investments in various business functions of smart businesses. And there are many challenges that must be overcome to succeed. How 'Kaizen' are you? The optimization organization Marketers should focus on interactions across every single touchpoint, whether it is a 'social media conversation,' an email, a website visit, a talk with a sales or customer-service rep, an interaction with an ad or even an indirect touchpoint, that cannot be measured at all. A customer-centric and even people-centric approach is about continuous improvement as Bryan Eisenberg calls it, referring to the concept of 'Kaizen' and being the core of his work regarding marketing optimization. The consumer is connected and indeed uses more channels than ever before when seeking information or preparing a purchase. However, the customer experience, individual preferences and triggers that show a 'question' or need, across all touchpoints, ultimately define conversations, content and, in the end, revenue. Improvement must be at the center of all business functions and customer-facing processes. Optimization is the mindset every organization should have. Not as an attitude but as a structured approach. It's time for the optimization organization. One that focuses on the preferences, pains and needs of all stakeholders in its ecosystem and constantly improves efficiency. Customers don't want to have conversations with your business all the time. What we call conversations often is nothing more than simple and shallow social interactions that have no meaning for your business or even the consumer at all. Marketers must stop acting like many parents: shut up sometimes and listen more often However, people often are still vainly searching for a true dialog, at every step of their buying process and when THEY need it. Compare it with the education of a child. Children don't want to be bombarded with parental advice and a never-ending stream of 'meaningful' opinions. They want to discover themselves and will ask your advice when they need it. They just need to know you are there once they have a question. They need to be able to trust you. And they will define what is meaningful to them or not. As a parent you'll find there is a discrepancy between what you find relevant for them and what they really need from you. Sounds familiar? Well, it is not a coincidence there is a discrepancy between what marketers believe is valuable and what consumers perceive as valuable, with decisions still being taken all too often in the boardroom or task forces without any involvement of the consumer whatsoever. Marketers must stop acting like these parents who think they know better. Empowerment is about offering space for freedom and growth. Listening is key in parenting. It is in business as well. Yet, in business, listening is not enough. Learning is not enough either, although it's time to move from monitoring to learning as Brian Solis wrote. What matters most of all is acting upon what you have learned in a holistic way. Optimization. Marketers and businesses simply are not in that listening mindset they should be in yet either, for many reasons. They are still these talking moms and dads. They are not taking into account the voice of the customer in a holistic way. They create content, spread their 'meaningful' messages, talk and try to drive conversations. They rarely ask what people really want from them. Actually doing something with the insights they thus gain is even more difficult, among others due to silos and disconnected technologies and processes. In order to optimize touchpoints, provide mutual value and actually improve everything we do for our customers, in order to raise profit in the short and – certainly – mid and long term, a culture of listening, analyzing and understanding is essential. And it is by definition cross-channel. However, the end goal of all these processes is improvement. Move beyond single conversations and focus on optimizations by an unconditional customer-centric attitude. It's one of the spots where social media will find a perfect place within your organization. Within the optimization organization. Let the conversations happen and optimize!

Enterprise Collaboration Take Two: Social Task Management Posted: 05 May 2012 06:50 AM PDT Back when it seemed like every business was drinking Facebook's Kool-Aid, I heard a really compelling argument for modeling collaboration software after Mark Zuckerberg's baby: it essentially eliminated the learning curve. It makes sense, right? Integrating new platforms into existing workflows has earned a pretty crappy reputation over the years. Deployment is complicated, it takes time and money to train people, and not everyone adjusts at the same rate. But mimic a channel that hundreds of millions of people are already familiar with, throw in a freemium to premium option, and boom. No such roadblocks. Jam-packed with activity streams, micro-messaging, file sharing and a load of other capabilities, the cloud-based and socially-enabled enterprise applications of the last few years have exhibited this logic with zany fervor. And while they've been useful, true alignment hasn't always been evident. No More Free-for-All Communication These days we don't hear as much about the "corporate Facebook" approach. Instead, businesses are looking for tools that plain and simply allow a team of people, regardless of location or organization, to collaborate efficiently around a single task. Enter the power of social task management. These tools still support the styles of communication we've come to know and love in our personal lives, but they also guide teams of the appropriate size to bring tasks to execution. Facebook still gets a huge hat tip for highlighting the importance of better user experience because we most definitely needed that. But trial and error has taught us that the real trick to collaboration — at least for now — is how tactfully the experience involves the people. Solutions that focus on the individual and then the team effectively preserve the integrity of the original project seed while adding the appropriate blend of disparate skills to actualize it. It's not just about general collaboration here; it's about better decision making and more efficient processes.

The Future of Social Media: Identifying the Drivers Posted: 05 May 2012 06:30 AM PDT Recently, I was asked to write a chapter in a book on digital marketing and business about what's coming next in social: the future of social media, both from a business and consumer perspective. It might seem like a challenging task, but it really is not. I'm in the process of writing it and will share my thoughts as I move along. I invite you to comment and thus contribute in a way to the book since collaboration and involvement are key in knowledge and participation a must in a social world. The collective, which includes you, is stronger than the single ego. Predicting what's coming next for social media is easy if you look at the underlying changes and evolutions. As a matter of fact, the drivers of the evolutions in the social space are in place since quite some years now. It won't surprise you that I think they revolve around service, optimized experiences, a holistic touchpoint view, relevance, value and consumer preferences. Today, these drivers start being recognized. They will continue to emerge and show in how social business is conducted. Indeed, social business, since the way people use social media – and not the social platforms themselves – profoundly impacts several business functions and is certainly not only a matter of marketing. Identifying those drivers, understanding consumer behavior and analyzing how marketers adapt – but often also keep making the same old mistakes they always have – helps you understand what's coming next and the future of social media. A key question is what you will do with these insights: follow or anticipate in a pro-active and people-centric way? No one can shape the life of the social consumer (including Facebook) So, is the future of social media a given? Yes and no. Determinism is often a way of denying the potential we have to shape our own futures. And that's exactly what smart people all over the world are doing, resulting in new networks and disruptive technologies that result in what we did not foresee. However, after they have arisen and become successful or fail, we can understand the why by looking at the underlying reasons. Take Pinterest, for instance. Although probably over evaluated as so many social networks and platforms are today, few could predict its success. If there is one thing we can say about it, it's at this: the consumer decides what he likes and there are no certainties in the social media landscape. If it fulfils a need and is user-friendly, fun or plain useful, it works. This is a major challenge for larger players in the industry such as Facebook. It's not a coincidence the 'king of social networks' acquired Instagram. Some people are growing tired of the self-absorbed efforts of some networks to define how consumers should conduct their 'lives in the social space'. They want to do it their way. Furthermore, the undeniable power of Madison Avenue in shaping where social advertising, for instance, is going, forces the industry to find revenue models that appeal to advertisers. When trying to understand the evolutions in the 'industry', look at where the money goes. However, often these models don't appeal to the 'users' and they will tell so. Sometimes by voicing it and often by jumping on the next fun social network or service. Social network fatigue, as Brian Solis, who speaks at one of our Fusion Marketing Experience events, calls it, is not a myth. The consumer seeks value, everywhere and always. His preferences shape the future of social media and of social business. Share your thoughts and stay tuned for the next post in this 'The Future of Social Media' series.

Google Puts the Author Into Authority as Penguin Eats Links Posted: 05 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT Google recently gave a name to its latest update that was being called a "webspam update" until someone decided to call it Penguin. The Penguin's job is primarily rooting out bad quality content that is being created just to gain position in search results regardless of whether a human would ever enjoy the resulting page. Some regard the Penguin update as Google's over-optimisation filter, but that simplifies it erroneously because optimisation is not a bad thing in itself. Over-optimisation means several things – keyword stuffing; too many irrelevant links being built too quickly with too much repetition of the same anchor text; dodgy blogs full of content that's been pulled from RSS feeds just to create pages that can benefit from Adsense affiliate cash… Google and Matt Cutts have been saying for years that their quality guidelines are simple. Produce a quality website that your customers/readers can enjoy and you will be producing the kind of website Google will want to promote. What's interesting about the Penguin update though is that it comes at a time when key new metrics come into play. While Penguin eats links and pecks at poor quality sites, authors are coming to the fore as a key ranking metric. Think about the word association between "author" and "authority" and you wonder why it was never before a key factor in scoring content. I recently argued that social signals are the new page rank and SEOMoz recently wrote about what it calls Authored Page Rank. Content is no longer ranked only based on the optimisation of keywords or the quality of the backlink profile, it is also ranked based on the author of that content and how influential that author is. Google and Bing both use Facebook and Twitter shares (among other networks) as ranking signals for popularity of links and for the popularity of the author. Marcus Tober of SearchMetrics recently discovered that 17% of search results now show the author of a piece of content. Tober said on SEOMoz: "I analysed the author integrations in the SERPs for a million keywords in google.com. For nearly 170,554 keywords, I found a minimum of one author integration in the SERPs and a total of 15,274 unique authors. It was surprising to me that 17% of results tested are showing author integrations because this is still a new feature – this was much higher than I expected." If you want to know how to integrate the rel=author variable into your content to make authors appear in search results, here's an explanation.

Some More Google+ Hangout Tips Posted: 05 May 2012 05:20 AM PDT Note: These are the transcripts of some of the videos from on of the most complete Google+ training for people that want to learn how to get most out of Google+. I have not included any images, but even though you will learn a LOT! If you would like to get the full course, including videos, MP3s and Transcripts go here… In the meantime, Enjoy! And we're going to talk about hangouts as well. How to flip them up, and how to use them. And they are very interesting. You can do video chat and lots of things with that. It's a great way to engage. But we'll talk more about that, and actually show you that shortly. OK, next on the list is hangouts. Let's have a look at hangouts. You can start a hangout at any time. Click on the Start a hangout button. We're going to have to make this a bit smaller. It has produced quite a big window. Bear with me for a sec. Now this is going to be interesting because I am recording a video, and it actually wants the video to be working as well. And in this case it seems to be sharing it nicely, which is good. I wouldn't expect this application to do that. But it seems to be working well. Now it says check your hair and make sure your mic works. Because it's a video chat it's telling you basically to get setup. And you can turn the video off like that, if you want to. But we'll leave it on for this test. There's also a settings menu to go into. And you can define the camera. That's my camera. I bet you've got a couple of cameras. I've actually got three cameras, because I've got an extra monitor and I've also got a builtin camera on my Mac. And also the Logitech camera, which is the one that I'm actually using right now, which I'm looking at, which is on the top of my monitor. You can choose your microphone. You can see I've got a few there. And I've got my speakers as well. You can play a test sound. Basically these are just standard configuration things you would use, to set up. Once you've clicked on that generally it will preserve those settings and you'll be ready to go. The other thing I want to point out here is your circles. This is the people that are going to be able to see and possibly join your chat. So this is important to get right. Later on we'll actually be doing some Google – well, notifying everyone. And we'll actually do some hangouts, and we'll get you to come on board and we'll do some testing together, and we'll have a bit of a chat. We'll do that live. But for now, while we're testing we haven't got anyone on board, because this is a test user. I'm going to click on that. I'm just going to choose someone. I know I have got one acquaintance here, and that's that William Hight user. I've added him in there before. Now the thing to remember here is basically anyone that you add to a particular circle, not necessarily that have added you, but people that you have added: they will have the option to connect to your hangout. And they will see that you are in a hangout, and they will choose whether they want to connect, if they so desire. So at this stage it's not sending any notifications. I can just click on hangout. And it is saying here obviously that no one is here right now. And that would be right, because of course, it is just us. And the other thing you can do here, I wanted to show you some other things, because – and as you can see there's my video down on the screen now – now as more users come up the screen will update depending on how many users are connected. Because the thing with hangouts is you can have up to 8, I believe there's 8, and that number will probably change over time – people connected at one time. We can all be chatting to each other. And other people can just come up and just watch this. It's sort of like a live webinar, if you will, which is pretty fantastic. So, you can have your speakers. You can do live presentations. But look if you're looking at this now, and you're looking at this face, and you're thinking, Oh, I don't want to do front on videos! Don't worry. There are some other options there. You can do a screenshare. I'll show you how a screenshare works. Click on screenshare. Now on the other screen, because I have got two monitors here, this is the screen that has come up. And I've got an option to choose different windows. So I'm going to choose another window. I'm going to share this one here. I click on Share selected window. Now when I do that, now you can't see that unfortunately because it's quite small. But that's actually sharing another window. And I can go into that other window on my computer. And I can share information, or do whatever. I can do live chats or do whatever. Or apply Google searches. To give you an idea of how that works, if I click on Screenshare again. Just to show you that it is working I'll bring up my keynote, which is a Powerpoint presentation. Can you see how that's showing in the window? Now that's the power you have got there. And I can change that on this other screen. I can make it wider. Can you see that changing, down the bottom there? Make it wider, or skinnier, or whatever, to make it fit. But the point I want to make is that this is small now, but in the other window the other people who are seeing you – I can't show what this looks like from other users' perspectives right now, but they will get the full screen presentation, way bigger than what you see in this video. The point I'm making is you don't have to show your face, if you don't want to. You can use this technology for Powerpoint presentations. You can use it for all sorts of things. Look, you can even use it for YouTube. If I click on YouTube. YouTube now allows you to share videos, and to have these videos on YouTube to actually come up within the Hangouts, which is really cool. So if I look for one of my videos, and old video I created years ago. 214000 views. If I click on that. Now there's the video talking. And at any time I can pause that video and you'll notice actually, well I'll start it again. I can be talking. You notice how it's almost muted out the sound of the video. And I click here, and that's actually much louder. So that's another little feature, being able to actually share YouTube videos. So that's a great way, if you had four or five YouTube videos you wanted to show, you could do a hangout and show those videos, which would be a great way to engage people to actually watch what you're doing. So let's stop that. Get rid of screenshare. I want to show you another funny feature. You've got a picture of a dog there. If I click on that. Now can you see what happened down there? It's going to be a little bit small, but Google Hangout has automatically added some facial characteristics. It's supposed to look like a dog. And notice how it's quite smart? I can move my head around and it actually tracks it and follows it. And you can click on the button up here and get different images as well. A Cat, that's the one for me, I've always been an angel haven't I? A devil, etc. So that's another little fun way. And you can also do Docs as well. And that will go to your Google Docs account and enable you to share. I won't show you that now, because we're running out of time. You can invite other people. And you can also Chat to them online if you wanted to. You've got Group chat capabilities. So you could have that chat enabled and fielding questions and giving answers and people could be talking to you, people who don't want to be on the video. They could be putting in comments and so forth, and you can be responding and saying, Hang on, what did you say? Oh yeah we were talking about how to … you know, answering their questions. Very, very powerful, Google+ Hangouts. And it's not something a lot of people are using. So I suggest you do look at it and really try and get the most out of it. Figure out how you can use it in your niche. Again, you don't have to do full facial presentations like I'm doing here. You might decide to do Powerpoint, YouTube videos. There's lots of different options there. The other thing to note is from YouTube you can start a hangout directly from YouTube on any YouTube video. You don't have to actually be within Google+. You need to be logged into your Google+ account, but after that you can do it automatically, which is incredibly powerful. So you can see that Google is trying to integrate their services with all their other sites and make it a seamless experience, which of course is what we want. We don't want any complexities with video setup. We want it all to be automatic. So I'll close this. Click on Exit, up at the top right hand corner. And that will close down Google Chat. And just a survey they give you from time to time, to tell them about the quality. That helps them to give them stats as to what it was like. We'll just say yes, that was OK. And we're back in our normal Google+ profile. Get the full course, including videos, MP3s and Transcripts here…

Tread Lightly and Don’t Carry a Red Pen: Tips for Editing a Corporate Blog Posted: 05 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT Every blog could use a good editor, and your corporate blog is no exception. Follow these tips to make the most of its value. So you've decided to launch a content marketing strategy. Congrats! That's great news, and smart thinking on your part – for several reasons. You've done some careful research, planning, and coordination, and now you're ready to start churning out the content. (Where does that come from again? To refresh, here is a list of common types of business content that can bring value to your company.) For this post, I'd like to focus on one of the first initiatives many organizations turn to – the company blog. In addition to content curation, which might be the easiest and most efficient dip you can take into the content marketing pool, blogging is a relatively simple and painless way to get great content in front of your audience. There are many, many resources you can turn to for advice on getting a corporate blog up and running, and there have been more than enough well-made arguments for why starting a company blog — especially one in which your employees are actively engaged and involved with — is a great way to connect with your customers and build your brand. Instead of rehashing that information here, instead I'd like to discuss tips, challenges, and strategies related to company blog editing and maintenance. After all, starting something is one thing, keeping it going is another. Before getting into editing concerns, however, you should make sure you can answer the following questions regarding three key elements of your company blog: Audience Who is your audience? What topics are they looking for your input on and what problems/issues can you help them in solving? What is the most valuable information you can provide them? Function and Format How does your blog reflect your company's story, culture, and values? How does it help you accomplish your company's goals? How does your audience navigate your blog? How do they find individual posts on particular topics? Roles and Responsibilities Who is responsible for posting content? Do employees write and post their own entries or is there an editor or administrator involved? If you can answer all of those questions, you're in good shape, and you're ready to turn your focus setting up a company blog to running it effectively and getting as much value from it as possible. Everyone Needs an Editor While structure and approaches vary from company to company, in general it's good practice to assign editorial responsibilities and ownership of the blog to a single in-house or freelance managing editor. That way you can ensure that the blog maintains a consistent style and standard, no matter how many contributors to the blog there are. This is especially a good idea at companies where a large number of employees are submitting blog posts regularly. Here are four key benefits editing should bring to a blog, from the most basic to more advanced: Correct grammar and punctuation as well as clarification Consistent style (both editorial style and formatting style; for more information see this post for tips on creating a content marketing style guide) Additional context and cross promotion (using editor's notes to introduce a series of posts on a common topic or theme, directing readers to connected posts and/or additional related content, etc.) Improved SEO (assigning optimized focus keywords, tags, and meta data, etc.) A good editor treads lightly. Her goal should never be to rewrite a post, but rather to focus on limiting her revisions and impact to providing the four functions above. It is important to preserve the author's voice and style, so long as it doesn't run counter to established house style. Advice to Editors: We All Know What Assuming Does When editing someone's work, it's always best to err on the side of caution, especially when making edits that might alter meaning. When in doubt, you should always run the proposed change by the author, or simply ask her to clarify what she intended. Tread even more carefully when editing material on a specialized topic or subject that you're not familiar with. Asking questions ahead of time is always preferable to deliver an apology and submitting corrections, after the fact. The same goes for major revisions such as changes to the title. In addition to ensuring that it is grammatically correct, there may also be SEO reasons for making a change – revising so that the title contains a valuable keyword, for example. The author will most likely recognize that's a valid reason for making a change (and be thankful you made it), but they also will appreciate you running it by them first. Always remember that blog posts belong to the author and that it's difficult for them to be invested in them if they feel otherwise. Employees who take the time to submit blog posts often do so by putting aside other items on their full to-do lists. The content they provide is what the blog lives on, and their individual voices and expertise are what keeps readers coming back. The true goal of editing should be to help employees feel more confident of their posts, knowing that a second set of eyes is there to help them make it the best content possible. Next week I'm looking forward to continuing this discussion, moving on to a focus on performance tracking and promotion. In the meantime, what are your blog editing suggestions? Do you have any particular do's and/or don'ts to share? Editor's note: To find out a whole lot more about blogging, check out OpenView's eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Corporate Blogging. And to get more tips on improving your content marketing strategy (and helping your company grow) sign up for the OpenView newsletter. Image provided by: ploughshares

Understanding Google+ and Why You Should Not Ignore It Posted: 05 May 2012 04:10 AM PDT Note: These are the transcripts of some of the videos from one of the most complete Google+ training for people that want to learn how to get most out of Google+. I have formatted it, but are not allowed to include any images, but even though you will learn a LOT! If you would like to get the full course, including videos, MP3s and Transcripts go here… In the meantime, Enjoy! Alright, let's have a bit more of a look at what this course is about. I outlined it very briefly at the start of the video. Everything you get need to know to get the most out of Google+, effectively. You're going to get a lot more traffic out of it, because you are going to find out the ways to attract people. So you'll get the most out of Google+. And of course the reason we're doing all this, the aim of all this, is to earn more money online. And that's what you're going to get by applying these principles. Now by the end of this video you're going to have a solid understanding of what Google+ is, and you're going to know what you need to do to go about setting it all up. And of course the other thing you're going to learn to do, is you're going to learn some of the Google+ lingo, which is Australian for buzzwords. Because Google+ does have some terms that are confusing the first time you see them. We're going to go through and make those a little bit easier and let you know what they're called, and how to go about about it. A couple of things you need to know is, and we're also going to outline this: reasons why you must not ignore Google+. Perhaps you've looked at this in the past and wondered, well, why would I bother? There are not many users, and isn't Facebook the number 1 social media site? We're going to talk about why that isn't the case. We're going to go through a brief history of definitions. We promise it isn't going to be too boring. I think it's important for you to understand the history and grounding of this, to understand where Google is coming from, to hopefully get you guys pumped up, to really realize there is a benefit to using this stuff. Some amazing stats on the growth of Google+ we're going to go through. And some of the terminology we're just going to clarify that. Google+, Google+ for business, Search+ your world, etc. And as I outlined before, why you need it, what's the advantage of you actually learning this information. You know, something that I do tell people when I speak to them is that ignoring Google – you do that at your peril. As you know Google is the number 1 search engine out there now, and I don't think there would be many people in the world who would say to ignore Google. But you know what? Google+ is a Google product! So many people seem to be ignoring that, and they're looking at Facebook as the only option. And looking at the competition, you would think that maybe it is Facebook versus Google+. The thing that we're saying to people is that Google+ is very new. It's rapidly growing. No, it's not the size of Facebook yet. But would you ignore Google? Is it wise to ignore Google? Absolutely not. You shouldn't be ignoring them, and you do so, quite frankly, you ignore it at your own peril. And that's what we're going to look at shortly. But let's start right at the very start. What is Google+? Well, effectively, even though Google don't like to say this, effectively you can say Google+ is Google's answer to Facebook. So it's the ability to share your thoughts, share your photos, much like Facebook, but on a Google platform instead of Facebook. It's also got video chat capabilities, it's got games, which probably aren't as important for us as Internet Marketers. It's got all those familiar things that if you've used Facebook, and I'm sure you probably have before, it's very similar in terms of the functionality, but of course it's completely different in terms of how to go about doing that. One interesting thing is Google+ Circles. This is a way of categorizing, if you like, your followers, or the people that you're following. You can, for example, use a Google+ account and effectively have two or three different niches in that one account, and you can segregate those people into different categories. So Google+ calls them circles. And it just gives you the ability to break down and categorize your users. And, as I've outlined, by assigning people to Circles, it allows you to converse with different people, instead of a mass broadcasting content to everyone you are connected to. We'll actually talk about this in full detail in the setup video, the video following this. There are different ways to go about setting up Circles and it's important for you to decide virtually from Day 1 which way you're going to go when you set up your account. So we'll talk more about that then. Let's talk about Google+ for Business. Well basically Google+ for Business differs from Google+ in that it really is made for business, for promoting products, business etc. It has got very similar capabilities to Google+ in that you can share views, photos and so forth, and even talk face to face with people, with video chat. We've talked about promoting business, products, services, but also it gives you the ability to measure your results as well. Search+ Your World: that's basically Google's way to personalize search engine results. In the past you've done a Google search, pretty well everyone will get the same results. So if you're searching for black cat, and I'm searching for black cat, we would both normally get the same information. What Google are telling you, in Search+ Your World, is that they are now personalizing your results. So let's say if you're doing a search for black cat, you'll get your own individual results. Some of the results will be the same, but some of them might be pulled from Google+, or from social media sites. So it's Google's way to make their search process more attractive to the people using it. Now if you don't understand this process and you're not actually using this you're going to be in serious difficulty. Because frankly you're not going to be able to keep up. Because in the past it's been traditional SEO getting yourself to page one. Now you'll find that Google might actually populate, put more YouTube videos in the search engine results. So they'll put results directly from Google+ page. So you might not even see your results on page one. So you need to know Google+, to figure out how to get your results even with this new Google Search+ Your World product out. The other thing Google Search+ does is profiles in search. I alluded to that previously. Basically it pulls up Google+ profiles right from the search box. It's putting them right into your search results, which is extremely powerful. And Google's emphasis is more on people and pages as well. So suggestions of Google+ accounts you might want to follow even, in your search engine results. So you want to get your account set up correctly, so that your account is an account that Google+ actually recommend when doing those search engine results. Now let's talk about a brief history. I won't bore you too much with it. A history of Google+. Basically it officially started in 2011. That's when they launched it first as a product. Now back then, and it's not that long ago, it was invite only. So you needed to know someone on the inside, or someone that had an invite, so that you could get in there. In September 2011 they officially opened it for everyone to use. And incidentally you can go to http://plus.google.com . Interestingly enough there were some problems with it, early on. Google were pretty strong on banning people, and it seemed to have an anti-business type stance. In actual fact there were a lot of accounts that were set up early on that were actually terminated by Google. They really lost the plot early on. Sesame Street! That's a classic example. Sesame Street set up a Google+ account, and Google actually banned their account. So it took them a while to figure out what they were doing. I think what they were trying to do was differentiate between Google+ and Google+ for Business. And as a result, as I said, in November 2011 they launched the Google+ Pages Platform for business. And you can see the link on the page there: http://www.google.com/+/business. That's now very much pro business. In actual fact, they're saying to create a Google page, you can do it from any page, any product. They're actually pro- business. And that's good, because as Internet Marketers we need that pro- business so that we can actually maximize and get the best results we can out of the Google+ platform. And the other interesting thing, in January 2012 they launched the Google Search+ Your World, which as we talked about earlier is the Google personalization of search engine results. Now all these things co-relate and link in with each other. And you need to understand all this. Now you might be sitting there right at the moment saying, information overload! Why do I need to bother with this!? Well, it is very important to think about the reasons why you want to use Google+. There's lots of reasons why you want to use it. Firstly these days, creating an account for YouTube, now requires a Google+ account. They actually require an account. And more and more Google products are actually requiring that you have a Google account which has an easy upgrade to a Google+ account. And you're actually getting benefit to actually having a Google+ account. Google+ "People and Pages" recommendations – they are those recommendations that Google put in the search engine results automatically – these cannot be disabled. So you can turn off some of the features of this personalization of search (which frankly most people won't turn off, people who aren't Internet Marketers won't turn it off) but even if they do actually disable the Google personalization search, these cannot be disabled. Google will still keep showing them. Let's face it, Google wants you to use their products, and they own the search engine market, for better or for worse at the moment. And they are going to put the search engine results in that they want. Yes, they're going to put stuff in that's very relevant, and information that people want to see. But they can be pushing their own stuff too. So the point is you need to have a presence in Google+ to make sure that your results are coming up in those search engine results. And as I said before, each person's search now is individually customized. This is a huge thing. It's such a huge change. Yes, Google have started previously over time, in previous years they've started introducing, you know, when you were logged into a Google account you could see some of your results, search engine results you'd found in the past. But now it's so much more comprehensive. It's just the next step. And it's a huge thing, and not a lot of people are understanding the difference. It's just something you need to be aware of basically. And talking about stats, another thing I noticed is that in October 2011 there were already nearly 40 million Google+ users. And now in February they're already at 90 million users. So that's huge growth. And predictions (and they are predictions – there's obviously no way at the moment to know for sure how far this is going to go): 400 million is the projection for the next 12 months. In any event, no matter which way you stack the numbers, that's a huge number of people. And who knows where it is going to end up? You need to be part of it, essentially. The other thing, and one of the most important things to consider here is: This is Google! Do you think they're going to eat their own dog food? In other words, what are they going to promote first? If they had a choice between showing Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+ information in the search engine results, which one are they going to show first? Yes, I guess the "Google high and mighty demigods" will say, well, whatever's the most relevant. And I guess, yes, to a degree they will do that. But given a choice, they're going to show you their own stuff first. They're going to show you their own services first. We've got proof of that already. If you look back to YouTube, three or four years ago it was rare to see a YouTube video when you did a search in Google. Now there's a YouTube video in almost every search engine result. The same thing is going to happen to Google+ over time. So the more you can nail this down, become part of it, get your profiles set up and start attracting followers and stuff, the better it is going to rank for you, and your results are going to be appearing in other people's personalized search results. Again, this is Google. They want to show Google+ to the world. They want to promote it hard. And you need to be part of it. The other thing to keep in mind is that up until recently the big names who were not really using it, for example Lady Gaga, the White House; and yes, even Tim and Anthony, those two famous Australians (!) are now using it. So lots of people are coming over to it. In fact one of the things you'll find when you first set up a Google+ account, Google will give you a list of important or famous people that you can follow. Because they want you to get a bit of exposure to … you know, get the word out. So more and more people are using this. And it makes sense, because anyone who is using the Internet to get traffic, to get followers, to get their message out, they are going to pick avenues. And they've got lots of users, and of course, Google+ has already got a lot of users, as I showed on a previous slide. The other thing we found which was quite interesting is that users tend to engage more than in Facebook or Twitter. We're not sure how you've gone in the past with Facebook and Twitter, but we've found with Google+ the engagement rate – maybe because it's new, but it might also be the quality people who are there, but they are more likely to click on the +1 button, the equivalent of your Like button; or apply, put a comment on one of your posts etc. So there's more engagement there. And of course, more engagement to an Internet Marketer generally means more sales, more people seeing your messages and taking action, which of course is very good. So WIIFM, What's In It For Me? Essentially we've talked about some of the benefits in the past, but to summarize what they are: Some "loving" from Google in the shape of more traffic, more money. Of course if you are doing well in Google+ you're getting your stuff to appear in the search engine results, you're getting more traffic, and ultimately, assuming that you've got a good monetization strategy on your page that you're directing them to, you're going to be making more money. So it's basic: more traffic, more money, which again is what we're after, as Internet Marketers. The other point I want to make briefly here is right at the moment it's "open day". Some of those people who don't know – when Google first started, late 1990′s, early 2000, there was a period of time when it was very easy to gain Google. Now I'm not suggesting that you should ever do that, anything blackhat, or anything like that. We're not going into that particular conversation. The point was that it wasn't particularly difficult to get search engine results on page one. Now that seems to be the case with Google+ right now, which is one of the reasons we're so excited by it. Because it's so new, Google so much want to get their results in the search engines in front of people. Because the more people that will see Google+ in the search engine results, they'll click and they'll join their network; and again that's more people for them. From Google's point of view, the more people they have as part of their network, the more ads they can serve up to these people, and the more money they can make. So we're piggy backing on the success of Google. So we're going to be making more money as a result of doing what they're doing, attracting more people. So right now it seems very easy to get those results, those really great listings. And again, if you're on the fence about this, now is the time to really be pushing this and getting in there and understanding Google+ and getting the most out of it. The more people you can add to your Circles the better. Again Circles are categories of people, which we talked about before. Again, to summarize, it's "Wild West' days right now in the search engine. No plugs. Google are continually plugging in, fixing up problems with their search engines not showing the right results and so forth. Now is the time to get into Google+ and get the most out of it, so you can actually benefit. One interesting point is that Google is actually giving preference to results in Google+. So if you know how to do it you can get your results showing immediately on page 1. We're going to do show you that in this course. We're going to show you how easy it is to get your results. So if you've got people following you, and you put in a particular topic, let's say "web traffic" for want of a better example. If people then type in web traffic in their search engine, and they're following your Google+, they will see your posts on page 1. That's how exciting it is. And we're going to show you that later on in the course, how to do that. But in general the preferences that Google are giving: they want you to see their dog food, so to speak. They want you to see their stuff first before Facebook or Twitter or any other account. So they are pushing it down people's throats at the moment. So as Internet Marketers we need to take advantage of that and get our stuff into Google+, so that our results are in front of people as well. Our evidence shows that posting and engaging in Google+ can dramatically help your organic results – which coupled with the Google Authorship Program, which we're going to talk more about in later videos, is going to give you another fantastic avenue to get great page one results, and get your listings to really shine, which is fantastic. Yes, just using Google+ can dramatically help your organic rankings. And I haven't gone into detail about the Google Authorship Program because this video is already turning into an epic. But we will be covering it in other videos. This is a way to get your image to show up, and a link straight to your Google+ profile, in all your organic search engine results for your web site. Now if that is not exciting, I don't know what is! Cop that Facebook! One other point I want to make about Facebook before we finish off and talk about what's going to be in the next video, think about these two things. If you're still struggling thinking about Google+ and wondering how relevant it is for you: Do you ever go into Facebook and do a search for something like "ice hockey results"? Facebook is not used for that, is it. Traditionally you go into Facebook to connect with people. But of course with a search engine you go in there to search for things like ice hockey and so forth. So the point I'm making is that it is a lot easier for search engines, who have got a lion's share of the search engine market, of the worldwide market for search that Google has now, to build a social media network and integrate it into the search engine. Facebook has to come at it from the other way. Yes, Facebook has got far more users, there's no question there, than Google+ does at the moment. But in terms of coming up in the future, you know, Facebook isn't a search engine. This is the point I want to make to people. Really it's very under utilized. Mainly because it's very new with Google+. Now is the time to really get up to speed with Google+ and apply it in your business. OK, that's a bit of a summary of where we are with Google+ and the course. And some of the reasons why you should be using it. Now we're going to talk about what we're going to cover in the next video. We're going to show you how to set up your account profile properly. And we're going to discuss the business page setup preparation. We're going to do that one in another video because it's quite a process and we don't want to put too much in the one video, otherwise it's going to be quite an epic. We're going to discuss the use of real name & personas. Because there are differences. If you're an Internet Marketer you've probably heard about or used personas in the past. We're going to give you the dos and donts of that. We're going to talk about niches. The what NOT to do are very important. Google have got some very clear rules on Google+ of what they like to see on profiles, and what they don't like to see. And also talk about how to set it up so that you can get the maximum results. For example if you're putting specific keywords in specific spots in your profile, you'll get better results. So it's very important to do that, and we're going to outline that in the next video. We're going to talk about linking to other social media sites, because if you've been an Internet Marketer for any period of time you've probably got a Facebook account, or you've got a Facebook page for your product, or if you're using Twitter etc. We'll show you how to connect to those other sites, and connect back to your main page as well. And we'll talk about settings and notifications, which are something you can do to get the most out of Google+. It's usually only a "set and forget". You do it once and you never have to do it again. But we'll talk about that as well. Basically at the end of the next video you'll have the knowledge you need to go about and go and setup your Google+ profile. So there you go! That's the end of video 1. I hope you've actually enjoyed it, and got a lot out of it. And I look forward to seeing you again on Video 2! Talk to you soon! Cheers for now. Get the full course, including videos, MP3s and Transcripts here…

Setting Up Your Google+ Account and Profile The Right Way Posted: 05 May 2012 04:05 AM PDT Note: These are the transcripts of some of the videos from on of the most complete Google+ training for people that want to learn how to get most out of Google+. I have not included any images, but even though you will learn a LOT! If you would like to get the full course, including videos, MP3s and Transcripts go here… In the meantime, Enjoy! Video 2 today, and we're talking about setting up your Google+ account. We're going to go through step-by-step and show you how to set your Google+ account and profile correctly so that you can take advantage of all the features of Google+. So, let's get into it! OK, so the goal of the video is by the end of this you will know how to set up your Google+ account the "right" way. Because of course, like most things, there's a right way and a wrong way, and we want to teach you the right way. So basically the video is going to cover walking you through, if you will, step- by-step, how to actually set up your account. It's not particularly complex, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind. And the other thing we are going to talk about is upgrading. Because by default, in the past, the standard Google account was needed to be upgraded before it could be used with Google+. That may or may not happen for you, because I think with the recent updates to Google+ they are now actually automatically creating Google+ accounts, negating the need for you to do an upgrade. But we will talk more about that anyway, as well. And the other thing to point out is ultimately I know probably you'll be very interested in using the Google+ for Business page. You need to have a Google+ personal account first before you can have a Google+ for Business page. So that's why we're doing it in this order. So some important information. Google really only want you to have one Google+ account. They don't particularly like the idea of personas. Now with your Google+ for Business pages, that's different. They are quite happy for you to have basically one page per product. So if you have got 10 products, or maybe 20 products – whatever it is, they're quite happy for you to have multiple pages. That said, even though Google only like you to have one Google+ account, which is your personal account, we think it is a good idea, and we actually recommend, you have a separate persona for each niche that you're involved in. So if you've got ten web sites, for ten niches, we suggest you have a separate persona for each. Even though Google+ does give you the ability to set up Circles, which are effectively categories, groups of people, and you can send messages to just those groups of people, we find that mainly from a public profile point of view, the information that you want to send out, you want to make public so the search engines can find it, index and so forth, and you don't really want to get too tricky and mixing up multiple niches in that one Google+ profile. So for that reason what we recommend we do is have a real account, your own account. You should be having that so you can then test your things and follow other Internet Marketers. Follow obviously us and our page, the Google Plus Conspiracy Code. But also have a persona for each of your niches. So if you've got several other niches, one for each. The other thing we're going to talk about, is I mentioned this a little bit earlier, upgrading your Google account to Google+, and the ins and outs of how to go about setting up your profile. So there's opportunities there to put links. We're going to talk about some keywords and so forth as well, because it's important that as Internet Marketers we want to make sure that what we put up doesn't cross the line. It's actually good information, good quality content. But it's not spammy as well. So we don't want to stuff our keywords in inappropriate places. But we also want it to appear to be real and legitimate to a person as well. We're going to talk about how to link to your existing blog, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. those types of things. And settings and notifications. Just general settings for Google+ as well is important. Just to give you and overview of how to set these things up. Most of the settings and notifications you only ever have to do this once, more than likely. But it's good to go through that, and we'll go through that as well. So we'll get stuck into that now and just go through step-by-step how to set up a Google+ account. OK, so here we are in a browser. And I've gone to just a standard google website. I'm going to go to plus.google.com now. Now when I do this, this account is a brand new account. You can see that, the user name here is – actually before I can show this to you, this pops up automatically when it's a new account. Before I talk about that I just want to talk briefly about upgrading. Because what can happen, and what used to happen until recently, is that when you went to create your Google+ account, when you went to plus.google.com it would actually ask you to upgrade it, and you would need to fill in some basic details, your first name and last name etc. Now what seems to be happening is that Google seems to have made a change very recently so that any time you create the standard Google account, which is like a Gmail account or any other of their standard services, you automatically get upgraded to Google+. And that's another factor that Google is really trying to push out Google+ to everything. So anyway, in this particular case, even though this is a brand new account, and this particular account has never been to Google+ before. It hasn't been to plus.google.com. It has been purely set up to show you how to set up a new account. You can see that it has already been added. So it's actually gone through the first step and added it to Google+. And now it is asking on screen now, Do you want to find anyone you know on Google+? Now if you're creating personas you probably won't want to be doing this. You'll probably be wanting to add your people manually or using another method. I'm going to skip this now, but there is an opportunity here to go through on Yahoo or Hotmail and import people, and connect to them, if you need to. But I won't do that now. I'm going to skip that. And Google is just coming up there now, just notifying you that it's going to be better with friends anyway. But we are going to add some more people further on. So we're going to "continue". (Now the "connect to site" bit you just saw, we're also going to do that a bit later.) OK. There's some suggestions there. There are other things you can do here. One of the first things I suggest you do is type in my name, Tim Buchalka, click on the search button, and add me to Circles. Now what you can do with these Circles, Circles are categories. Now the thing to remember with these Circles is that by [by the way this second one here, you won't see that when it comes time to be doing that. This is just a test second account that I created. The one that is correct is the one with the profile that we'll be adding]. But a Circle: think of that as a category. You can categories all your contacts into different names. Now the particular contact won't have any idea that you've assigned them to a particular category. This is purely for you as an internal representation for you. You can click for example on "Create new circle". And I can type in, maybe, Internet Marketing. And you can have a list of all the people you're following that are into Internet Marketing. So I click on Create. OK. Now because that's the first one I've created it's automatically added me to that now, as it's telling me here with "What happens when you add someone to a Circle". We'll talk more about the Circles later. Click on OK, got it. And you can see now that's changed to a green box saying that Tim Buchalka is now in Internet Marketing. So likewise, that's now added me, and you'll be able to see posts that I make automatically in your stream. That's like your news feed. Stream is the Google+ term for that. The other thing I suggest you do is type in Google Plus Conspiracy Code. Search for that. Sorry, GPlus I should say. You can't use the word Google Plus. So you go there to GPlus Conspiracy Code. Now this is a page, but the same thing applies. When you go there, click on Follow. And when you do that you've got the opportunity to Change the circle. By default it adds it to Following circle, which is the default circle that's been created by Google+. You can click on Change circle if you wanted to and you can say, I want to put that in Internet Marketing, and you can click that if you want to take it out of the Following, if you want to do it that way. It doesn't really matter. But you can see that's already been added. So you can see we've added two people already. Or one, myself, and also I added the GPlus Conspiracy Code page as well. So let's continue. Now the other thing Google+ does when you first log in, it actually gives you a list of people to add. Now when you're creating personas it's actually a very good idea to add some of these people because from a footprint point of view, if someone as an Internet Marketer is creating lots of accounts, one thing that wouldn't normally do is spend any time creating, or sorry, adding any other … they wouldn't be following anyone else is what I'm trying to say. So what I suggest you do is do actually add some people. Now the list of people that come up here will be location dependent. For example in Entertainment, some of the people they're showing here may not be relevant to you. But for example, Young Talent Time is an Australian show. And on here, "Featured on Google+" Bondi Rescue, well that's actually an Australian show. And there's a picture of the Sydney Opera House here. These are all actually relevant to Australians. So you'll get different things depending on what you're clicking (and where you are). So I suggest you add some of these. I'm going to click on these individually if you want, or I can click on the ADD button, which I know is going to add all fourteen. And you can see it's automatically added a Circle called Featured on Google+. Likewise, go to the Fun and Interesting one. We'll click on them, add those as well. And maybe the Music one. Robbie Williams, James Blunt etc. And I might just add the News one as well. So there you go. I've quickly added a few people there. And you can see now that's told us we've got 41 people so far. Google will probably ask us and tell us we should probably have 100. But we'll worry about that a bit later. Click on Continue. Next we come to your profile. Now I do suggest you fill out this profile. Now obviously if this is your persona, you'll have information that is relevant to that persona. The other thing to mention here is you can change the level of security. So whether everyone sees this information, or whether only people in certain circles, or people closely connected to you, whatever. I generally try and keep the information here as public information that anyone has got access to. So in this case I'm just going to make up information here. My School, I finished that in 1990. I wish! My work, my job, I am the boss. Normally you would fill this out with better information, relevant to your persona. People can see this, so you want to make sure it's relevant. Change profile photo. You do want to upload a profile photo. I suggest you do that. You've got various options there. You can click on Web camera, Photos of you, Your photos, or you can upload one. I'm not going to do that now, but I do suggest you add a profile photo. It's very important. It doesn't have to be a real life photo. You can use a cartoon picture, or an image, something that actually goes with that person. I normally upload a photo. You saw that in my image, in my profile, when you added me, you saw me, my face come up. So that's my real image. So for your real account I suggest you do that, and for you personas: you should always have something in here. Google lets you do a bit of cropping when you choose a photo. I'm not going to do that now anyway. Click on Finish. That's the first stage finished. You can see what happens now. We've got to the next stage. And we've got things happening here. I'm just scrolling down having a look. You can see the stream is the equivalent to News Feed in Facebook. The stream is showing stuff that people are posting. These people are the ones that we added automatically. You could do a search. I mentioned before I was going to show you mine. You can see that image again. I'll just click on to my page. Notice the image there on the left hand side? That's important as well. And there are some of my posts as well, some of the things that I've posted on in the past. And you can see other people have engaged and put some answers in, etc. So that's just an idea of what my stream is. That's how you check a particular person's stream. If you click on Home, then you get everyone. The other thing down here you will be able to do with your stream is break this down into categories. If you've got people assigned into different categories you can click on the name, for example Internet Marketing. So in this case, you'll only get the Internet Marketing information. Now, you can see here, it's just telling us for the first time, we can change this to "show most things from this stream". So if you want your Internet Marketing to be the primary thing, you can scroll that up to show more of that and less of the other thing. Probably a good idea to do that for your persona accounts because you don't want to see all the other ones you added just for the sake of it. So you can see there, that was just a quick way to only include people from that particular stream. Or if you just click on the Home button, that will be everything, by default, and you will get everything back again. Alright, let's have a talk now about photos. I do suggest you add some photos. Photos are a good way just to make your account be more realistic. In terms of photos it could be more images of that particular persona. It could be more pictures of me, if that was my account. It could be anything. The fact that you're actually taking a bit of time to really fill out a profile tells Google you're a real person. So I suggest you do that. You have various options here. You can Click on photos from your circles. Which gives you a list. You could actually put in my photo. These are all the photos that have been found so far in your circles of people you have circled. Remember you've only got a small number there. Photos from your phone, photos of you, photos from your posts, and of course you can upload photos as well. I suggest you do that. Now that's separate from your profile photo which we talked about earlier. These are additional photos. They will actually appear on what Google calls your Scrapbook. So I suggest you do that. We'll just continue now and get into profile. Now what we want to do here is we actually want to change some information. At the moment we haven't posted anything, because we're brand new. We want to go into About, and then we want to click on Edit my profile. You can see some of the basic information I've put in there. I've put in Australia, my school, and my job, we've entered those. Male. Profile visible in search: this one here is very important. Profile discovery should always be set to 'visible in search'. Because we want Google (or any search engine) to find our information. We don't want to hide it, because obviously we're using this to try and rank better in the search engines. I'm going to click over here: Edit Profile. Again you've got the opportunity of adding more photos. Again I suggest you do want to do that. You can see here, there's an Introduction, Bragging Rights, Occupation, Employment, Education and other fields to fill out. I suggest you do fill those out. I'm going to key in a little bit now. We go to Information first. The Information is a bit different to the others in that you've got the opportunity to put a link in here. So I do suggest you link to something here. So if it's a persona it would be the main product page that you're promoting. So let's say for example we were promoting the Web Traffic Genius, and this is the persona – the seller of the page – we might say something like Hi, My name is Ima GplusUser and I created the web traffic genius. Now web traffic genius – we're going to pretend those are the keywords we're trying to rank for. Now what we would do is highlight that: web traffic genius; click on link, where we have the opportunity to type the link: http://www.webtrafficgenius.com. And you can test the link to make sure it's going to work. Yes, that works. Close that down. Click on OK. You can see there it's now added the link. But you wouldn't finish there. You would type in a bit more and make it real. Eg: "I have been in the internet marketing game for 5 years and have been a programmer for 10 years." And you could add another link in there, but don't spam it with keywords or spam it too much with links, or it's going to be very clear to Google that you're an Internet Marketer and not a person. Now this here: I talked before about security; about permissions. This is an area where we can select who is going to see this information. Now in nearly all instances we are going to select Public. Because if you don't select Public, and select, for example, Your circles, that would mean only the people in your circles would have the option to see this. And we want the search engines to see this, we want to be ranked. So we want this content to be public. So I suggest everything that you create, that you add to your profile, is public information. You can go make it Extended circles (which are basically equivalent to 'Friends of friends', like in Facebook where you have Friends, then Friend of a Friend, somebody that friends know; well Circles and Extended Circles work in the same way). But I would suggest you click on Public, and you select that for almost everything you're doing. Bragging rights, this will be another opportunity. There's no option of putting links in here. And again you've got the option to make this Public. But you could also use this opportunity for ranking web traffic. If web traffic was another keyword you were looking to rank for, for example: "Web traffic is my forte and internet marketing is my game.". Click on Save. And again I have left that on Public. Occupation – same deal there. "Software developer with my most notable achievement being the creation of the web traffic genius. Click on Save. Employment and Education I filled out before. Places lived. Probably a good idea to change that to something realistic. For example, Adelaide, for argument's sake. Save. And you can add multiple locations as well. Just to establish that you're a real person. The only exception to the public rule is here. What I suggest you do for phone is I do suggest where possible you consider putting one in; but change it so that you don't use your Public one. You can change it to Only you for example. So basically the reason you would be doing this is to show Google that you're a real person, but you don't want other people to see this in your account. Again most spammers, people not using this the way Google+ want you to use it, or Google want you to use it, would probably not even enter a phone number here. So do consider doing that. I'm going to leave it blank for now. But it is certainly an option. And Relationships. Quite a few options there. Again, I do suggest you fill that out, and make sure that if you're creating a persona that it is consistent with what your persona is! Because people do actually read these profiles. Married name. And we talked about "Profile visible in search" before. Now in terms of that, we've actually done everything in that section. The other area here which we want to do is; we added one link here, if you remember, the web traffic genius (in Information). Other profiles; What pages are about you? This is a good opportunity to key in another page. Let's click on that. This is also where we set up our managed connected accounts. Now connected accounts are what we talked about earlier in the video, and that was about setting up Twitter accounts, etc. So we'll click on that, for example Twitter, down here. You need to type in a twitter username. Now if you get it wrong, if I put it like that "tim buchalka" I'll probably get an error. I click on Add and you can see there: "Spaces detected. Please be sure you are entering an account profile or URL." You can paste in a URL or the account name. I'm going to key in without a space timbuchalka, because that happens to be my twitter id. And you can see there it has found it. Click on that link if you wanted to, and you could see that's gone to my twitter account. And you can see that it has. You can see that's me. Click on Back again. [Because I didn't save that, I need to do that again... Repeats the action... finds that: ] You can see there it did actually save, but it didn't show it on the screen. You can call that a Google+ bug. It's been added. Now the other thing here is, click on this button. The reason we want to click on "Show on my public Google Profile" is of course, that is a back link. And it's a back link to your page. So it's very important to do that. And likewise with Facebook, and others. You have got a multitude of options here. You can select whatever you want to do there in these various accounts and automatically add to it. Now these are the ones that Google give you as a default. You have still got other options here. And they are virtually any other account. So for example I could go back here now to "Add custom link". And I can enter the custom text, what I want to show in the link text – eg "Google Plus Conspiracy Code" and type in the link: "http://gplusconspiracycode.com". The other options again, Public is what we want. Click on Save. You can see there now we've got Google Plus Conspiracy. And again if we go back to Other profiles, Manage connected accounts, we still have got the timbuchalka, and that will show separately in the public profile. I'll just make sure it saved it. Yes, it does save each time you come in here. So you see that little thing here, when I clicked it there, Save. So it has actually saved that. So that will appear on the public profile page, which of course is what we want. You can add your other links here and I do suggest you do. Again, don't add too many links here. We don't want to be spammy. Save it. Contributor… I mean these pretty well work the same as with the Other profiles. What I normally do with Contributor, if I'm actually blogging for argument's sake, I would put in the link there, with a URL to a particular blog that I was blogging on. Because I was contributing to that web site, as opposed to Other profiles which you are connecting to. I don't find it really matters too much, but to be consistent it's probably a good idea to do those in the right way. Now, what pages interest you. Now I do suggest you fill that out as well and add some links to stuff that isn't your content. So it could be a wikipedia link, it could be something not related to internet marketing at all. Something that you are interested in, or that your persona might be interested in. That again establishes your account as a real person, and not something which is… a persona effectively! Which of course is what we don't want to Google to see this account as being a persona. So that's really the lowdown on what the profile is. We've probably gone through most of what you need to know. There's a couple of other bits here we could talk about. I'll click on Done editing first, to save the changes. Now Photos, we've done that before, I won't do that again. Videos: this is your opportunity to upload videos if you want to do that. You can add them. There are various options. We'll go through that in another video, because this one is more for setup. And +1′s – this is equivalent to a Facebook Like. These are the things you've done around the web. And I do suggest once you've set the account up you do use these +1′s because that again establishes you as a real person, who is actually on the Internet and sharing content. Again there's nothing here at the moment, because this account is brand new. Now OK, so that's the profile, the basics. You've got this other thing here, the Circles. Now this is the area where you can click on Your circles. Remember we added about 40 people, and then the other two people were myself and the Google Plus Conspiracy Code. You've also got the option down here to see who have you in their circles. These are the people are following you. At the moment obviously that's zero because we haven't had anyone follow us yet. So this is what you can do here. You can Create new categories, you can Find people, you can click different buttons and so forth to put them into different categories. I don't use this screen very much. The only reason I might go in there is to perhaps find some people. It gives you another way to find people. But you can also use this box up here at the top. For example Internet Marketing. We could just type in a term: your keyword term for your niche. You can then find other people. But we are going to talk more about how to find people in another video. We won't go through that now, because this is just a setup process. The other tab up here, the other options, is Games. We're not going to talk about now. But you can play games if that's your thing and you want to do it. OK, the last area now is the profile setup. And to get to the profile setup. To get to the profile setup you go up here to the top right hand corner. Click on Google+. Oops, Profile I should say. Ah, third time lucky: Account settings. OK Account overview. You've got the main one here: Google+. I'm not going to go through the general profile settings. These are the Google+ ones. Now the ones I want to talk about: remember we talked before in the video about settings and notifications. Notifications are events, if you will, when something happens. For example if someone comments on your post, or if someone clicks +1, you can decide firstly which event, which type of events give you notifications – in other words you get notified. And secondly – well, that's really the main thing that you get to choose. There's no secondly. You can choose whether to have that or not. Now the option here is you can have Anyone. I normally set it to Anyone, because the notification effectively, even though it says "Who can send you…" – under here, or anyone – basically it's Google who are sending you those notifications. So if you have a setup on your account and I come along and I comment on one of your posts, Google will send you an email or an sms, depending on how you've set up your notifications, to say that I've done that. I've clicked on +1, or there has been some sort of engagement. So that's what we do here. I normally set that to Anyone. And, Who can comment on your public posts? Now by default that is Anyone. You need to remember that by default that's set to Anyone, and if that's set to Anyone, potentially there's a spam issue there. So you need to make sure that you're looking at your posts. I actually make a point of leaving it on Anyone anyway. Because you do want people to actually comment. But if that's the case you need to have a process, where you are actually checking your posts for spam, and removing it. We are going to talk about spam in a future video, because Google have actually added some better capabilities for spam now. You can actually drop people and so forth. In the past it was a lot harder to do that. Notification delivery: you've obviously got email. That's where the notification is going to go. You can also add a phone number. And if you add the phone number you can get notifications by SMS. I'm just going to leave that on email for now. Weekly updates: I suggest you do that. Just gives you a bit of an overview. The thing is, with this content, once you've followed a lot of people, if you're following a lot of people in your niche, you're going to be finding that they distribute a lot of content that may be relevant to people following you. So it's a good idea to get those weekly updates. Because you might find something in there that you missed in your day-to-day processing. Because of course your stream is constantly updated, every day, and every time someone posts. The weekly update just gives you the top content, which you can then look at re- sharing. And we'll talk more about sharing in a future video. But it's just a great way to add content to your list. Because obviously… – when I say your list, I am talking about the people who are following you on Google+. The thing to remember with Google+ is that it's not all about selling. In actual fact if that is all you try and do, you will get very little out of Google+. We are doing a number of things here. We are trying to get people to follow us, by putting out good content; we're trying to use this for rankings, to get better rankings in the search engines; and we're trying to get more web traffic. They're the three primary reasons we're doing that. Selling is probably number 4, even though that's the end result. That's probably the net result from doing those other 3 things that I've talked about, we'll actually get more sales as a result. So you probably won't be doing a lot of selling from Google+. But we'll get a lot of other things: sending out good content, putting up posts that have got good keywords in it to help you rank better, linking certainly to some of your other promotions. But you won't be doing, in here, hard selling, or anything like that at all. Again, this weekly update gives you some top content. Hopefully if you've done your homework and you've added people relevant to your niche, then you can start sharing your content. And obviously a good type of content as well would be something you have to vet, to make sure it's relevant. If it's a competitor and the content is a link to his sales page – probably you wouldn't want to share that! But if it is a decent article and you'll find there's no obvious signs of selling (and you'll find in a lot of cases the information on Google+ isn't of a selling nature) then why not share it with your list. Because they'll actually get something out of that, and be able to use that information. And it shows that it comes from you, while still preserving the fact that it came from the person that you share it from. But you get a link as well to it. You get a link to their profile, the person you're sharing it with, which is a win-win. So it's a good idea to do that. Now the other thing here is the Posts. You've got the opportunity there about when do you want Google+ to notify you? "Mentions me in a post", "Shares a post with me directly" again, notifications in your email (or SMS if you set that up). I'm not going to go through all these other options right now. These are things you can go through later and decide. By default you can see they are virtually all on. Even +1 on non-Google sites. If someone does that, that's on. You can edit that if you want to, but I would leave that on. Google+ Pages: Automatically add a Google+ page to my circles if I search for + followed by the page's name. We'll talk more about that later. Probably no real advantage to leaving that on Show links to recently played games – well whether that's on or off, that doesn't really matter. That's really just games. Your circles. When you share posts, photos, profile data and other things with "Your circles" you're sharing with all of your circles, except the ones you're just following. Now that's an important thing to remember. If you're just following someone nothing that you share will be seen by them, effectively. You can customize that and change that if you want. Options there: Choose who to include in your circles… so these are all the people you can choose to include. We're using Public most of the time anyway. So when we share information that is Public, which again we'll do this process in a future video, Public goes to anyone anywhere. So most of the time, because we're only setting up one persona per niche, this doesn't really apply to us. So I just usually leave that as a default. So back to where we were before. You've got some other options here, Photos. I suggest you probably leave those as default. People whose tags of you are automatically approved to link to your Profile: normally Your circles. That's automatically approved. If you're happy for anyone to put a photo and to tag you in anyway you would leave that to Anyone. Click on there to delete it. Click on Add names, circles to make that Public. And that would mean that anyone on the Google+ platform could add a photo and a link to your profile. Now obviously you could see how that could go crazy if someone wanted to write some really nasty material about you, or supply a terrible photo or something. So you may or may not decide to do that. The default option is Your circles. Probably not a biggie, either way, because it is images. I wouldn't really worry too much what it is set there. And you would probably never want to do this, but if you wanted to disable Google+ or delete your entire Google profile here! Once you've done that it actually saves as you've done it, and we're done with! Alright, well this part of the video is now finished. We'll actually go back and do a bit of a wrap now. OK, so what we covered today. We went through the process of creating a brand new Google+ account. Or, effectively that process, the Google process, we showed you to how to customize the Google+ component. We talked about personas, real names, and niches, and why you should have one Google+ account per persona. And we talked about how technically speaking of course Google only really wanted that one account. And we talked about upgrading your existing Google account to Google+. But in most cases that has now changed because Google have now changed their policy, recently, to make Google+ mandatory. So it does that upgrading to Google+ automatically. We went through the ins and outs of profile setup, how to link to your existing blog, Facebook account, Twitter etc. We talked about settings and notifications. And we talked a little bit about what not to do, in terms of not keyword stuffing and link spamming, and really trying to make yourself come across as a real person, which of course is the goal in any web site. We want to make sure we're not an automated bot, we're not a spammer. We are in fact a real person. OK, that's it for this video. What's in the next video? Well, we're going to talk about how to use a Google+ account. Obviously we've set it up. The next step is actually using it. We'll talk about the stream, which again is the equivalent to the Facebook News feed. We're going to talk about what that is and how to understand it, how to use it. How to find content from other people, using feeds from Sparks, which is a feature of Google+. We're going to talk more about circles. We showed briefly inn this video about how to set those up, but we're going to talk more about those, and how they work. Finding other people in your niche, which again is important, because again we talked about sharing content, and why that would be important. And how to find directories and add them. Because directories are groups of people, and if you can add yourself to directories you can get a lot of traffic from people who are searching through those directories, who can find you and ultimately follow what you're doing, which of course is a good way of escalating your traffic. Alright, that's it! That's the end of today's video. Thank you very much for watching. We'll be back soon with video 3! Get the full course, including videos, MP3s and Transcripts here...

Rinkuru: Japanese Interpretation of LinkedIn Posted: 04 May 2012 08:30 PM PDT Godzilla Meets LinkedIn LinkedIn has been allowing the input of Japanese text and even sub-profiles in Japanese – for over 3 years. "Nihongo de LinkedIn" group is just over three years old, and hosts discussions in Japanese – from over 3,600 members. This didn't win over the Japanese; from several months ago we can can also select a Japanese menu. But LinkedIn does not have the Rinkuru Girls, alas… nor does it put them in space A real class act, Rinkuru is sending a Bentley Limo and a "somewhat" decorated Rolls Royce on a promotional tour of Japan I have to wonder, what drives them to create sloppy monsters from things that are already well built out and fairly solid to begin with? I will leave you with this parting thought: from those who do not read Japanese, in the image below, from the top page of りんくる (copy/paste that to find them; I will not dignify them with a link) they boast 11,358 companies have registered with their new social network. And yet, mine makes just 243 (I always root for underdogs) Facebook likes? I smell bad sushi. How does りんくる compete with LinkedIn, then? They do allow you to search jobs, create a blog, save photos, and save the simplest of profile data as well as a separate resume page. And they use a lot of pink. Let's see how this goes over…

The Rise of Instagram in Social Marketing: Tapping Into Consumer Creativity Posted: 04 May 2012 07:25 PM PDT In just the past few weeks, there has been an explosion of brands jumping on the Instagram bandwagon. Track Social has been following brands' use of Instagram on Facebook through it's searchable database of active Facebook apps and we have seen a continuous stream of new Instagram initiatives. Among the list of brands that have already incorporated Instagram into their Facebook pages, a select few deserve praise for tapping into consumer creativity. What we've found will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever stumbled on, say the ePrize photo stream: no one cares about your Instagram photo feed. In many cases, brands that have set-up dedicated Instagram Facebook apps are simply providing a slideshow of blandly captioned (and totally underwhelming) photos that – despite their sepia filters – utterly fail to get anyone's attention or generate one iota of actual online engagement. This all seems to stem from a compete misunderstanding of what Instagram is FOR. For millions of app users, the pleasure of Instagram is the way it makes us feel like artists. The way it allows us to instantly transform the things we encounter in our daily comings-and-goings into bits of ephemera. The way Instagram's filters – which may soon enough become passé – allow us to inject a little soft-focus mystery into our humdrum routines. The way, with the touch of a button, we can recontextualize, and thus re-enchant, the world, capturing it in a way that encases our point of view in a seemingly timeless package. Instant nostalgia. Which is to say, we don't want to look at your boring PR photos slapped with sepia. We want to make our own. Through Track Social's News Feed, we were able to pin down just when and which brands have created Facebook apps for Instagram, and even better, which are running campaigns to not only promote their brand, but also encourage fans to be proactive. Here are just two examples of innovative Instagram-ing already underway. Each offers a glimpse at how brands can harness this increasingly useful way to entice user interaction. SEE U @ SAKS Saks Fifth Avenue is inviting shoppers to come into their stores armed with smart phones and find one item they can't live without, photograph it with Instagram, tell everyone what makes it so special and why they want it, and by including hashtag #SeeUAtSaks, they could win $1,000. Why is this absolutely brilliant? Let us count the ways: 1. Social campaigns don't always have the advantage of directly driving in-store traffic, but this one encourages both online and offline engagement by getting users through the door. 2. Every single Instagram-ed image is an instant advertisement for the product being photographed and for Saks. Not to mention, by having users describe why they want the item, consumers are essentially writing their own sales copy. 3. All these pictures and captions get posted by users on their Twitter feed for all their friends and followers to see. For $1,000, Saks gets direct access to the friend networks of its most critical target audience. That's a picture worth more than a thousand bucks. WHOLE FOODS EARTH MONTH PHOTO CONTEST We'll let Whole Foods explain: "Each week during Earth Month we'll select a new theme that captures one reason why it's more critical than ever that we take special care of this world in which we are lucky enough to live. To enter, simply take a photo that fits the weekly theme with the Instagram App and upload it with the #WFMEarth hashtag. We'll randomly select one weekly winner to receive a $100 Whole Foods Market gift card." Whole Foods gets it: they understand their consumers are savvy and creative – and more importantly, that they're eager to demonstrate just how creative and savvy they are. So Whole Foods becomes the facilitator of creativity – much like the app itself – providing the occasion and opportunity to show off, get recognition and maybe even collect a reward. This week's theme for those who want to show their skills: "From two feet to two wheels to shared rides, grab a pic of the host of ways to move yourself while preserving Mother Earth. "It won't be long before smart brands figure out that photo-sharing is a hugely powerful way to not only engage consumers, but also have consumers help market their brands. Who knows, this might just be the summer of Instagram.

Should You Hide Your Address at Google Places? Posted: 04 May 2012 04:50 PM PDT Really? Boy, that sounds pretty dumb. Why would you want to hide your address at Google Places? Well, depending on the nature of your business you might have to. Google has actually been calling businesses that are listed in Google Places and asking them if they serve clients at the listed address. If the answer is no, as is common for many home-based businesses and businesses that perform services at the customer's location (think appliance repair companies as an example), then your listing in Google Places may suddenly vanish. This happened to a potential client of ours, so we want all of our clients to know and be prepared for this. If you're really not prepared to accept customer visits at your listed address you should hide your address in Google Places to prevent the penalty. Otherwise you may disappear from Google Places until you hide your address. For morebackground on this change, see the excellent article at SEOmoz. It describes the odd history of this policy change at Google and provides good advice to help you decide whether to display your address.

5 Reasons I Don’t Tweet During Conferences Anymore Posted: 04 May 2012 04:50 PM PDT I've stopped tweeting from seminars, workshops and other live events I attend as a speaker or an audience member. Here's why: 1. Multi-tasking, research shows, isn't productive. In fact, the opposite is true. If I'm in the audience to learn, and I'm busy listening, and busy tweeting, something's got to give. If you can do both tasks exceptionally well, great. I can't. So I won't. 2. I don't want to miss one valuable lesson from the speaker who's on the platform or from things I see in the room. At Publishing University, sponsored by the International Book Publishers Association, in March of this year, I was a member of three panels that discussed social media and online book promotion. I love hearing Dan Poynter, the self-publishing expert, and attended his presentation on Saturday morning, but arrived late. If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have missed the clipboard he had sent around the room so audience members could give him their names and email addresses and subscribe to his ezine. "That's brilliant," I thought to myself when I glanced up and saw the clipboard. When I speak, I send a basket around the room and ask for business cards if people want to subscribe to my newsletter. Problem is, people's email addresses are sometimes old ones, or they're not even printed on their business cards. I don't know that until I get back to the office. Thanks, Dan. I now use a clipboard. 3. I don't want to have to worry about tweeting when I'm away. Leaving for a conference for a few days and freeing myself of any social media responsibilities is actually a treat. Try it. 4. These events are terrific places to network, build relationships and recruit joint venture partners. I don't want to miss hearing an interesting question from an audience member who I might want to meet later for coffee. 5. When I speak at these events, it galls me to see audience members glued to their mobile phones, texting like mad. If I had my way, I'd prohibit anyone from even bringing a phone into the room. I want to give the speaker the same courtesy I expect. That means I'm no longer going to encourage audience members to use a special hash tag, or even tweet tips from my presentation. I want their eyes on me, not their phones. What about you? If you tweet from these events, why do you do it? If not, why not? If you're a speaker, what do you think when you see people texting during your presentations?

Google’s Emphasis on Authorship and Google+ Posted: 04 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT You may not have heard of the rel=author tag that began as a Google experiment, but there's no doubt that you have seen a call-out similar to the one below that highlights the author of the content in the Google SERPs. This is a unique way of highlighting authorship, which is meant to help users discover great content and lends authority to the content being highlighted. Now Search Engine Land is reporting that one in five Google search queries is producing an author box in the top 100 results. There are two ways to do it, too: 1. Link your content to a Google+ profile using a verified email address. 2. Set up authorship by linking your content to your Google+ profile (helpful for those who do not have an email address on the same domain as the content–for instance, if it's a guest blog post). So why does this matter to you? Well, connecting your content to Google+ essentially highlights your content in the search engine results pages and builds your personal brand, which can be extremely helpful if your business is looking to become more authoritative in your industry. Let us not forget, however, that this is ultimately incentive to beef up content shares in the social desert that is Google+, which is obviously the added benefit of offering this authorship "highlight" for the platform.

Get Social: Become an Authority in Your Industry Posted: 04 May 2012 03:45 PM PDT Whether you're a suit-wearing corporate company or the local bakery, you can establish your brand as an authority in your industry and in your community using social media. There is a fine line between being another active brand on social media as opposed to being an authority. There are many components that are factored into creating a perfect recipe for success – we've listed a few key elements your brand can do to establish an authoritative online presence: 1. Who Are Your Consumers? Whole foods has a killer standing within the food and health industry because of their incredible knowledge of who their consumer is. They know their customers' culture, workout routines, concerns, interest, passions and goals. Reaching that ground where you know who your customer is on an emotional level will give you a huge upper hand in establishing authority. Social media gives you the power to get familiar with your fanbase. Whole foods realizes that causes like being environmentally-friendly are a huge passion of their consumers. In this post, they found a way to honor a fan and create traction on their page. 2. Quality of Your Network Surround yourself with the best. That means your competition, your influential consumers, and people who fit your demographic. We use the Twitter networking tool, Brandchirp, to reach many followers at a time who fit the target demographic of our clients. Crowdsourcing is another huge way to network. Crowdsource by using Twitter's "Advanced Search" to locate brands, users and relevant conversations happening within your industry. This is an excellent way to see how people feel about a product, to measure overall sentiment about an industry or brand, and to jump into the conversation – further establishing yourself as the authority and expert. You can view more on network building here: 3. Quality Control Just like you wouldn't cut corners with the quality of your product, you can't slack off on your social media either! Create an editorial calendar to ensure you're touching on all aspects of your brand and maintain consistency, but never at the expense of quality. Don't post to post, fans can smell inauthenticity from miles away. Learn more about quality content here. 4. Unique Campaigns To be an authority you have to distinguish yourself from your competition and stand out to your consumers. Social media was once a major way for brands to stick out in itself, but now that more and more brands are catching on, the pressure to utilize dynamic and creative social media approaches is growing. For lifestyle brand, POE, we created the campaign, #NameHer, to incentivize users to share the name of the woman who has most shaped their life for a chance to have a signature shoe named after her. This touches consumers on an emotional level, establishes a unique voice, and makes it a place of community – further establishing POE's authority among users. Leveraging social media to become an authority in your industry makes a full circle back to your fans. If you've taken these steps above, you've created credibility, trust, and value for your consumers. That is the name of the game when striving to be the authority. The floor's all yours: Which area can your brand improve in to create a stronger authoritative social media presence? Visit /excelamktg for further customized social media marketing ideas, innovative campaigns, current social media trends, and insider tips for small business success.

Promotions on Facebook – How Not to Get Your Page Deleted and Lose Your Fans! Posted: 04 May 2012 03:15 PM PDT When Facebook Promotions go bad Running promotions on Facebook is one of the key strategies many businesses use to attract new Likers to their pages, and to increase the amount of activity on their pages. How many times do you see "Like this post to win…" or "share our page to enter" pop into your News feed? For us, it's at least a couple of times a week. But. Facebook has very tight rules around running contests on their platform. You know that, right? Of course you do, you ticked that little box saying "I have read Facebook's terms of service" when you signed up for your business page. Yes of course we're joking. Nobody reads those things. They run to many pages, and the majority of scenarios they cover won't apply to most users and, well, they really ought to know that "I have read the terms & conditions" is the most frequent lie of this decade. So no, Facebook aren't making it easy for you. Nevertheless, there are one or two areas in there which will affect most organisations, and contests are one of them. Get on the wrong side of the law and Facebook will delete your page, just like that, gone. No discussion, and we've only heard anecdotally of ONE instance where a company got their page back – and that was because they knew someone who worked at Facebook HQ. It won't happen to me, right? Until fairly recently, we've not heard of too many instances of pages being deleted, but it seems to be on the increase. The notice on the right was posted by a New Zealand-based burger chain who lost their almost 10,000 fans after someone complained about a contest breaking the rules. Other brands we know have been hit include a French clothing retailer (lost 130,000 fans) and the Indian pages for FCUK and Cadbury's. Smaller companies don't tend to hit the news when their pages are lost, but we've heard of a few. So statistically, given how many companies are in breach of the rules on a given day, it's not *likely* to be you, no. But all it takes is one of your Likers (or even, without wanting to be too cynical, a competitor) to complain about your page. At the click of the Facebook Terminator's mouse, all that time and money invested in building your community will be gone. What can I do to protect my page? Obviously our main advice is to read the rules, and take them seriously. Oh and make sure your agency does too, if you're outsourcing – we're aware of many who are running contests on their clients' behalf right now, either because they're ignorant of the rules or they think it's a reasonable risk. The full Facebook Promotions Guidelines can be found here. Secondly, stay up to date. At the time of writing, the Promotions Guidelines were updated just over two months ago. Facebook don't make a big noise about it when they make changes, and they do so regularly. Thirdly, if you're going to run contests, the easiest way to ensure you're compliant is to use a specialist application. These will keep the promotion on a separate tab on your page, and will guarantee that all the other guidelines are followed, such as disclaimers. The premium service we use to create custom facebook tabs for our clients is great for this, so give us a call if you'd like help. Thirdly, don't put too many of your marketing strategy eggs in one basket. Remember, you don't have a contract with Facebook (or any other social media site you use!) and even if you do nothing wrong, they could pull the plug at any time. Try to diversify so that you've also got a communication channel with your customers via your website, or have encouraged many of them to opt-in to your email database.

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